Scott Turow is at it again

[darryl]

Scott continues the Amazon as Anti-Christ campaign by the Publishers Guild, oops, I mean the Authors Guild. Please Scott, concentrate on your Art. I have enjoyed those of your books which I have read.

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/13/scot...zon/singleton/

[caleb72]

Who is the interviewer - Scott Turow in a dress? Talk about a bunch of Dorothy Dixers.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by caleb72

Who is the interviewer - Scott Turow in a dress? Talk about a bunch of Dorothy Dixers.

They should both be in Parliament!

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by darryl

They should both be in Parliament!

Its been done.

[Barcey]

Wow, that piece is just dripping in journalist integrity. So impartial, just the facts. I almost fell off my chair from the hard hitting questions.

[abookreader]

The nook is widely regarded as the better e-reader device, but if you’ve accumulated a library of Kindle titles, you can’t take them with you if you decide to switch. [Technically, you can, but most users would find this quite challenging.]

Easy solution if authors and publishers are really worried about that. Quit insisting books be sold with DRM.

I don’t like losing sales, but the real problem is at the margins. Midlist authors have been struggling to survive for decades now. If you start eating into the publishers’ returns, then at the bottom of the food chain, those books are just not going to get published. We have seen that happen.

Because as we all know.... if Hatchette, Random House, Penguin etc etc etc decline to publish your book, there is no other solution for a midlist or small sales author. They just will not be published. Ever. It is Big 6 or nothing!!!!! (end of sarcasm).

walks away humming to herself (It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.......)

[Penforhire]

You'd think he was slapped hard enough last time he opened his blog-mouth on this! He does a lot of song and dance expanding his essential complaint -- "...there’s a lot of fear for what the world with Amazon in charge is going to look like."

How is he possibly representing a group of authors? Amazon gets them paid more, not less.

[howyoudoin]

Am I the only one who thinks that the interviewer was a whole lot more obnoxious than Turrow here? She made it seem like less of an interview and more of an attempt to piggyback on Turrow's name to make her own points.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Am I the only one who thinks that the interviewer was a whole lot more obnoxious than Turrow here?

You're not alone.

[curtw]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Wow, that piece is just dripping in journalist integrity. So impartial, just the facts. I almost fell off my chair from the hard hitting questions.

OK, I'll agree that it wasn't exactly hard-hitting, but what do you see in the article that isn't factually correct?

[howyoudoin]

Rebuttal didn't take a long time coming..

http://kevinomclaughlin.com/2012/03/...+McLaughlin%29

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

Rebuttal didn't take a long time coming..

http://kevinomclaughlin.com/2012/03/...+McLaughlin%29

The rebuttal is interesting but hardly news around here.
The truly fascinating stuff is in the comments. Nice discussion of how the traditional advance+royalty system *really* works and screws midlist writers.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

How is he possibly representing a group of authors? Amazon gets them paid more, not less.

As well as millions of "amateur" writers who probably would never be read if it was left up to the publishing corporations. But they're not proper authors, so they're not allowed to join the Authors Guild.

I read somewhere that Turow was also partly responsible for the 17% royalty on ebooks writers get from the corporations. Says a lot about whose interests he's really looking after.

Mind you, I never heard of him before he started on his war against Amazon, so it's a pretty good publicity stunt.

[anamardoll]

The problem with people like this guy is that they make even reasonable points sound ridiculous.

Take the "Amazon hurts authors" thing, for instance. On the face of it, this is ridiculous: Amazon provides a self-publishing platform to authors who might never be published, and provides it to them free of charge and at higher royalty rates than the traditional publishers provide. That's not hurting authors, that's helping them!

And yet... Amazon isn't the indie author's best friend and close lover. The royalty rates are very frustrating to me: I would prefer to price under 2.99 but that's the 70% sweet spot. And if Google sells my book for less than that (and apparently they can), Amazon can slash my price to match and cut my royalty rate by half.

And I don't even get 70%, because Amazon takes "delivery charges" off the top that effectively penalize me for including images in my book since the charge is based on book size. And supposedly this charge will only go up with their new format, as it's apparently a bigger file size.

I can't participate in the lending library unless I promise Amazon total exclusivity of my title. And if Amazon's exclusivity manages to do the real work of putting B&N out of competition, I have zero doubt that Amazon will bring the royalty rates down with even more blatant chipping away. Why wouldn't they? It's a business, after all.

Amazon doesn't "hurt" authors and it sounds ludicrous to me for someone to say so. But the "help" they provide is carefully calculated to help Amazon first and authors as a byproduct. It's a symbiotic relationship, but one in which one party is dominant and another party is individually expendable. And authors should be forewarned and given the tools necessary to make smart decisions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by abookreader

Easy solution if authors and publishers are really worried about that. Quit insisting books be sold with DRM.

Besides stopping the DRM, sell them ONLY in ePub so no matter what reader you have, the eBooks will work.