Amazon vs Hachette

[tubemonkey]

Personally I don't care what Amazon blocks or doesn't block, nor do I care about its reasons for doing so. I just support its right to do so.

Besides, these ongoing fights between publishers and retailers have no impact on me. I only read/listen to free books - public libraries, public domain, credits, freebies, etc.

All hail the mighty Amazon

[Billi]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I don't think Amazon are blocking Hachette pre-orders in the UK - only in the US. Rowling's new book, "The Silkworm" has a "Pre-order" button on amazon.co.uk.

Maybe not Hachette but perhaps some other publishing houses. That's at least what's happening in Germany, too.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Billi

Maybe not Hachette but perhaps some other publishing houses. That's at least what's happening in Germany, too.

Thanks - I wasn't aware that publishers other than Hachette were involved.

[Billi]

We have a short thread about it in the German part
(https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=239505)
but I guess it's not of much use for all other people.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Thanks - I wasn't aware that publishers other than Hachette were involved.

Other retailers do it, too. It's actually an old practice: no contract, no shelf-space.
Perfectly legal. (Just ask S&S authors with books released in early 2013.)

One less-bad thing about the silly hissy fight is it it drawing people out to point out all sorts of things:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kodi-s...m_hp_ref=books

To be fair, if a store refuses to carry Incendiary Girls, most will put in a special order--but only if a customer specifically requests the title--so the potential reader not only has to wait but must return at a later date. Barnes & Noble does sell it on their website, but their shipping time is longer than that of Amazon. Sound familiar? In essence, these stores have been delaying availability of certain titles for customers, just as Amazon is now doing with Hachette books. The hypocrisy is frustrating, to say the least.

I can certainly empathize with the Hachette authors--I've been dealing with this for months. I understand what it's like to be caught in the crossfire with little agency or control. I understand, more than most, what it's like to lose readers and revenue.

But I don't understand why the literati are up in arms. Amazon took a page from their competitors' playbook, doing what Barnes & Noble and other stores have been doing to Amazon-affiliated titles for months. And now, many folks consider the Hachette feud to be a sign of the literary end times--

And then there's this quote from last year:

Laura Gross, the literary agent for the best-selling author Jodi Picoult, said the dispute had certainly hurt sales of her client’s latest book, “The Storyteller.” Barnes & Noble has “taken limited orders, limited placement, and did not do the normal outreach to their customers online, which really hurt,” Ms. Gross said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/bo...ales.html?_r=0

The practice is actually common. Most affected publishers just keep on negotiating and don't make a spectacle of their impotence. Sometimes retailers even join up to boycott a publisher's entire catalog for what *they* feel is good reason. Perfectly legal, nobody cries. Nobody accuses them of hurting authors or destroying literary culture.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...-boycott-grows

AMAZON Publishing doesn't whine about the boycott of their titles that B&N orchestrated and their authors know that's part of the reason for the higher royalty rates. It annoys them but they don't waste time and goodwill throwing public tantrums.

[BearMountainBooks]

So why in the world don't these publishers get off the can and create wonderful websites with great coupons (like kobo books does) and build a direct customer relationship? Sure, I get why they didn't in the old days, but old days are old for a reason (and old and gone in this case). Not that I care. I haven't had any trouble getting books that I want to read, but I buy from wherever it is cheapest so other outlets work fine for me.

The mind boggles at the inefficiency and lack of ability for creative solutions.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

So why in the world don't these publishers get off the can and create wonderful websites with great coupons (like kobo books does) and build a direct customer relationship?

Speaking as a customer, I wouldn't want them to. I want to buy my books from a single store, not have to go to a separate store for each publisher. There's already one publisher I do that with: Baen. One is enough.

[ProfCrash]

If I could get my books cheaper at the Publisher site I would do it but the site would have to be easy to use and sell the book in a format I can use. I would love DRM free but that is a pipe dream.

I am not worried about different stores, I can bookmark the sites I use. I can see what I want to buy on Amazon and buy somewhere else if they are less expensive.

The Publishers can sell direct but they don't. That is their own damn fault.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

If I could get my books cheaper at the Publisher site I would do it but the site would have to be easy to use and sell the book in a format I can use. I would love DRM free but that is a pipe dream.

I am not worried about different stores, I can bookmark the sites I use. I can see what I want to buy on Amazon and buy somewhere else if they are less expensive.

The Publishers can sell direct but they don't. That is their own damn fault.

In the UK we have Sainsbury ebooks, Partnered with HarperCollins and the Random Penguin (Used to be aNobii before HMV sold up for £1) so they are at least trying to set up their own.

Random house used to have rbooks.co.uk (It was bloody afwul though), seems to be just a mirror of randomhouse uk site since the sainsburys site went up.
When you click buy on the link in one of their ebooks on the Random House site it gives you a fair few options as well as buyin direct from them :-
Amazon Kindle
eBooks by Sainsbury's
eBooks.com
Google Play
Hive
iBookstore
Kobo
Nook
Sony Reader Store
Waterstones
WH Smith
OK, so Sony is Dead and WH Smiths sell through Kobo (Although the Smiths site is easier to search on), Hive seems to have improved a lot since I first saw it.

It's not like they aren't trying to promote different places to buy ebooks.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Speaking as a customer, I wouldn't want them to. I want to buy my books from a single store, not have to go to a separate store for each publisher. There's already one publisher I do that with: Baen. One is enough.

I used to feel this way. But once I started using coupons at kobo and sometimes buying direct, I got used to it. Shrug. I almost always am getting a better deal however and it's been worth shopping around for me.

[fjtorres]

Short memories out there...

In the aborted PDA ebook era most of the US BPHs sold ebooks from their websites either durect or through partners. I actually gritted my teeth to buy one from RH, *once*. At least it was a proper ebook in lit and not a pdf.

The prices and "quality" of their sites are why that wave of ebook adoption mostly fizzled.

[ProfCrash]

I didn't have an e-reader then and have only really bought from Amazon. By the time I entered the market, Kindle 1, the only store that I knew to be available to me was Amazon. I learned about others at sites like this but I was pretty clueless.

If the big publishers are complaining about Amazon then they should find an alternative. Set up their own stores and sell their books. But they won't and they will bitch about Amazon. And whatever else comes after Amazon.

[DiapDealer]

"We need (and want) you to help us sell millions and millions of our (e)books (and to warehouse our physical books for us so we don't have to, and to provide pre-orders as a convenient mechanism to help us know how many copies to tell our binders to print), but we want you to shut up and do all that extra stuff for whatever we decide it's worth for you to do it for us. Because we are special snowflakes.

"P.S. We also want you to discount what we want discounted and not to discount what we don't want discounted ... WHEN we want it discounted (or not). Again ... see the Special Snowflake clause."

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Short memories out there...

In the aborted PDA ebook era most of the US BPHs sold ebooks from their websites either durect or through partners. I actually gritted my teeth to buy one from RH, *once*. At least it was a proper ebook in lit and not a pdf.

The prices and "quality" of their sites are why that wave of ebook adoption mostly fizzled.

Some mentioned earlier that the publishers' customers are the retail channels, not the readers. Setting up their own stores puts them in direct competition with their main customers, which can be bad for business overall. How do you sell a book cheaper on your own site while at the same time offering it to retailers to sell at a higher price? You can't, thus, no deals for readers who buy directly from the publishers' websites.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Some mentioned earlier that the publishers' customers are the retail channels, not the readers. Setting up their own stores puts them in direct competition with their main customers, which can be bad for business overall. How do you sell a book cheaper on your own site while at the same time offering it to retailers to sell at a higher price? You can't, thus, no deals for readers who buy directly from the publishers' websites.

It can be done with temporary deals, coupons, contest/win a book. But agreed, they can't very well sell for 60 percent off every day and expect retailers to carry the book. Samhain often has discounts though, especially pre-order on the Markhat (Frank Tuttle) books. IT was cheaper by 50 cents? I don't remember. I pre-ordered it from them. I think Carina does some sales too, but I"ve only bought from there once and I don't remember if it was price-related.