Latest Authors United letter to Amazon Board

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

If the BPHs were losing money on all the titles that don't earn out they would've stopped publishing midlisters.

Weren't most bestselling authors first non-bestselling authors? Janet Evanovich is one example who now gets $10 million advances. I'm sure I could come up with a bunch more names.

I don't think any of us have to real data to be sure on this. But it seems likely to me that midlist and below authors are profitable to big publishers only because of the few who write breakout bestsellers. When they do, the publisher just hit the jackpot, since they experience high sales volume against a small advance.

Repeated top-of-the-list authors sometimes lose the publisher money because the advance was more than the book earned, however you calculate earnings.

[BookAdmin]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

SteveEisenberg

Very good analysis, so we can say that Amazon is profitable for beginner writers and not for famous ones. Regarding the advances, the authors still have variable part.
I mean If the publishers give 10 millions in advance and made 100 millions, the authors get some of this 100 millions. So for best seller writers, I think it's important to have a good share, right?

[gweeks]

I thought this was interesting. I don't remember anyone here posting the link.

What About Hachette’s Responsibility?

http://watershedchronicle.wordpress....esponsibility/

Greg

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BookAdmin

..., so we can say that Amazon is profitable for beginner writers and not for famous ones.

No.

Indie publishing (it's *not* just Amazon) is not just for beginners.

In fact, the biggest beneficiaries of indie publishers are long-time established authors with deep backlists. Look at the names of the biggest sellers among indies and you'll find dozens of authors with decades of books behind them. Some keep a foot on both camps but many have tried doing a few indie titles, compared the two modes, and switched to indie.

It is a matter of control, revenues, and actually getting some promotion behind them.

Traditional publishing at the BPHs works very well for the Kings and Pattersons of the world (and the occasional friend or relative of an editor) but less well for everybody else.

The Randy Penguin, for example, is projected to publish 12-14,000 titles this year. Of those, they will buy front table space at B&N for maybe 4-6 every month. A dozen or so will get stocked cover-forward, and the rest of each month's 1000+ titles is on its own. They will be listed on the distributors' lists and on the online retailers' websites. Maybe they will garner some attention, maybe they won't. But whatever promotion and traction they achieve will be due solely to the author's own efforts.

Well, many authors have concluded that if it is up to them to do most of the work, they might as well get most of the money and go Indie. And now we have authors making six and seven figure annual incomes off books that never earned out 4-digit advances. And we have even more authors making four and five figure incomes off books that never would have bern published at all, not for being bad books, but for being "too niche", or "not what we're looking for right now".

For many *established* authors, the choice is going indie or going hungry.

Edit: here's a rough example of the math an informed author needs to look to understand what a tradpub contract really offers, moneywise.
http://www.courtneymilan.com/ramblin...hts-are-worth/

It comes down to the present day value of a lump sum vs a steady recurring stream.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by gweeks

I thought this was interesting. I don't remember anyone here posting the link.

What About Hachette’s Responsibility?

http://watershedchronicle.wordpress....esponsibility/

Greg

Yes that was another good blog post by Dan Meadows. Contract negotiations and disputes happen all the time and we normally don't hear about them. The Disney and Warner Bros disputes hit the press because eeeevil Amazon was at it again but somehow it didn't hit the news when they were able to resolve them.

Amazon has made at least three very reasonable offers of putting a time clock on the negotiations with an associated financial penalty on both parties. This is a typical good faith arrangement to demonstrate that both parties are doing everything in their power to resolve the dispute and any financial penalties accumulated would be distributed to 3rd parties that were impacted (the authors). Hachette has quickly rejected each of these so they've demonstrated that they have no interest in bargaining in good faith or quickly resolving the dispute.

The Authors United claim that they are not taking sides is pathetic and insincere. There has been zero criticism about Hachette despite the fact that a lot of the blame should be hoisted on Hachette's shoulders.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Barcey

Yes that was another good blog post by Dan Meadows. Contract negotiations and disputes happen all the time and we normally don't hear about them. The Disney and Warner Bros disputes hit the press because eeeevil Amazon was at it again but somehow it didn't hit the news when they were able to resolve them.

Amazon has made at least three very reasonable offers of putting a time clock on the negotiations with an associated financial penalty on both parties. This is a typical good faith arrangement to demonstrate that both parties are doing everything in their power to resolve the dispute and any financial penalties accumulated would be distributed to 3rd parties that were impacted (the authors). Hachette has quickly rejected each of these so they've demonstrated that they have no interest in bargaining in good faith or quickly resolving the dispute.

The Authors United claim that they are not taking sides is pathetic and insincere. There has been zero criticism about Hachette despite the fact that a lot of the blame should be hoisted on Hachette's shoulders.

Or perhaps Amazon wanted a time limit because they wanted to strong arm the publishers into line one at a time rather than deal with several at the same time. Amazon isn't as pure as the driven snow. This is two large corporations negotiating. Hachette looks at this from a publisher's point of view, while Amazon looks at it from a retailer's point of view. Neither looks at it from the customer's point of view, Amazon's protestations to the contrary.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by gweeks

I thought this was interesting.

Greg

From your link:

Other companies involved in terse negotiations with Amazon, involving many of the same tactics, have emerged none-the-worse-for-wear in a matter of weeks.

Nobody has statistics on what the average length of time is of an Amazon-supplier dispute. I see that Amazon is now selling MacBook computers, but for how many years were they not?

First, your response to Amazon’s offer to participate in a royalty fund for impacted writers is puzzling if your desire is to care for your writers.

Royalties are a scheme to shift the risk from publisher to author.

Royalties mean putting the risk on the author. If Hachette cared tremendously for the writers, they would be buying the titles they liked outright, as would Amazon.

From a link in your link:

Amazon insisted that Perseus communicate the news to its clients over the phone, rather than via email.

Some people are desperate in their determination to hide from us the real facts here. I'm sure several of those Authors United have leaked the terms to Hachette, so why can't we know?

[darryl]

@pwalker. On the contrary, Amazon quite obviously looks at the issues from multiple points of view, including the views of its customers. Amazon also now wears its own publishers hat, and, unlike Hachette, even looks at the issue from the point of view of authors. And even Hachette's authors. Yes, at the end of the day Amazon will act in its own self-interest. But Amazon determines what is in its best interests intelligently, which, in a successful business, must almost by definition take into account the interests of all the what are these days referred to as "stakeholders". I can discern little intellegence in Hachette's actions. It is acting, as usual, out of complete and utter self-interest. This would be arguably intelligent except that it has apparently determined what it thinks is in its self-interest with complete contempt for its authors and its customers. It is also arguably intelligent if they can get away with it. They might, but I hope not. It is one thing to exploit authors and treat customers with contempt when the oligopoly cartel is the only game in town, and their authors too fearful for their careers to speak out. It is quite another to continue these tactics in these times with the cartel so weakened and under pressure.

There may come a day when Amazon dominates the industry to the extent that the cartel has in the past. If this happens, we can only hope that Amazon by that stage has learnt the lessons which will hopefully be taught by the demise of these greedy oligopolists. If not, readers and authors will once again face an unfair market. But even in this worst case scenario I doubt such a market will be more unfair than under the BWM cartel.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Or perhaps Amazon wanted a time limit because they wanted to strong arm the publishers into line one at a time rather than deal with several at the same time. Amazon isn't as pure as the driven snow. This is two large corporations negotiating. Hachette looks at this from a publisher's point of view, while Amazon looks at it from a retailer's point of view. Neither looks at it from the customer's point of view, Amazon's protestations to the contrary.

It sounds like you agree that Hachette is delaying so that they can illegally conspire with the other publishers again. Where we seem to disagree is that you think they should be allowed to conspire with their "competitors" and form a cartel to strong arm Amazon.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Barcey

It sounds like you agree that Hachette is delaying so that they can illegally conspire with the other publishers again. Where we seem to disagree is that you think they should be allowed to conspire with their "competitors" and form a cartel to strong arm Amazon.

Let's see, Amazon uses it's dominate market position to dictate to suppliers and sells product for less than cost to seize control of the market (i.e. exactly what Standard Oil was accused of) and that's fine with you. A group of publishers say they want to individual determine the price of their books (i.e. agency model) and you consider that evil. Hum...

First off, Hachette delaying does _not_ equal illegally conspire with the other publishers. It simply means that Amazon has less leverage. It's a lot easier to play strong arm games, such as pulling pre orders, when you are only dealing with a small group of books. Heck, most customers wouldn't have even noticed if it hadn't been in the news. Trying the same tactic with multiple publishers means that a larger percentage of the books that people want to buy are effected.

Second, I remind you that the publishers settled out of court without admitting guilt. The legality of publisher banding together to hold out for agency pricing has not been determined yet.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Let's see, Amazon uses it's dominate market position to dictate to suppliers and sells product for less than cost to seize control of the market (i.e. exactly what Standard Oil was accused of) and that's fine with you. A group of publishers say they want to individual determine the price of their books (i.e. agency model) and you consider that evil. Hum...



First off, Hachette delaying does _not_ equal illegally conspire with the other publishers. It simply means that Amazon has less leverage. It's a lot easier to play strong arm games, such as pulling pre orders, when you are only dealing with a small group of books. Heck, most customers wouldn't have even noticed if it hadn't been in the news. Trying the same tactic with multiple publishers means that a larger percentage of the books that people want to buy are effected.



Second, I remind you that the publishers settled out of court without admitting guilt. The legality of publisher banding together to hold out for agency pricing has not been determined yet.

Amazon is using it's dominate market position to negotiate a better contract for themselves. It happens all the time and I don't have a problem with it. Hachette is using it's government granted monopoly over 100's of thousands of books to negotiate better terms from Amazon. I don't have a problem with that. Hachette banding together with 4 other supposed competitors, who combined have managed to accumulate government granted monopolies over 95% of the books from the last century, that I have a problem with. In your previous post you indicated that Amazon is trying to expedite an agreement with Hachette to avoid that scenario.

Second, I'll remind you that Amazon has never been charged with violating the U.S. Antitrust laws as you claim. They've established market dominance in ebooks just like Apple has with music, if they abuse that by suddenly raising prices by 50% then their customers can go elsewhere. It the major publishers abuse their government granted monopoly and suddenly raise prices 50% then the customers have no other option but file sharing sites. That's what I have a problem with and that's what was done.

[DiapDealer]

I can't stay silent any longer. This has been driving me nuts throughout this and other threads, so I'm going to be that guy.

It's dominant position, or dominant player; not dominate position/player.

Dominant = adjective
Dominate = verb

Someone has been using it consistently wrong (and it's not Barcey).

[Barcey]

I notice that Apple is using their market dominance in the music industry to strong arm the music labels for lower prices.

http://recode.net/2014/10/02/apple-a...subscriptions/

Sources say Apple is talking to the big music labels about a new set of rights and features it would like to include in a revamped version of the Beats Music service it bought earlier this year. Among the things Apple wants is a new pricing structure that would allow it to sell the service for less than the $10 level it’s at now.

I look forward to the uproar and scathing opinion pieces in the NY Times and WSJ.

There must be a furious race for the "www.musciansunited.net" domain.

The DoJ better ramp up the staff to answer the phones.

[:cricket:] [:cricket:] [:cricket:]

[mrscoach]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I can't stay silent any longer. This has been driving me nuts throughout this and other threads, so I'm going to be that guy.

It's dominant position, or dominant player; not dominate position/player.

Dominant = adjective
Dominate = verb

Someone has been using it consistently wrong (and it's not Barcey).

THANK YOU!!! I have noticed a trend lately to confuse the two (just showed what I read LOL) and it drives me nucking futs.
The person/company that dominates the market is the dominant person/company.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I notice that Apple is using their market dominance in the music industry to strong arm the music labels for lower prices.

http://recode.net/2014/10/02/apple-a...subscriptions/



I look forward to the uproar and scathing opinion pieces in the NY Times and WSJ.

There must be a furious race for the "www.musciansunited.net" domain.

The DoJ better ramp up the staff to answer the phones.

[:cricket:] [:cricket:] [:cricket:]

Ah, but that is different.

Music isn't "culture".

That's the real problem of course. Amazon is a homogeneous entity out to destroy our culture.