Amazon vs Hachette

[Synamon]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

P.S. I notice that the eBook price, which was earlier $9.99, is now $14.99. Perhaps that has nothing to do with the negotiations. Are Sunday night purchasers willing to pay more?

Originally Posted by Fbone

I just noticed after your post that the ebook is $11.99 at B&N while it's $14.99 at Amazon. Is that the first time an ebook has been priced lower at B&N?

And now it's $9.99. Seems like the usual price fluctuations due to Amazon price matching to me. But I'm sure you can come up with some kind of "Amazon is evil" conspiracy to explain it instead.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Barcey

I thought that this would come to a head when JK Rowling's book actually got released but it seems that they've come to an agreement so that Amazon will sell it. This could drag on a while yet and it's not going to sit well with the other impacted Hachette authors.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...d-dispute.html

The following quote from that article is total BS. It's on sale at Amazon with reduced wait times because it's a book by J. K. Rowling and Amazon doesn't want to lose out on the sales they expect to get from this book.

“The book is available because it went on sale yesterday,” said Sarah Gelman, a spokeswoman at Seattle-based Amazon, in an e-mail.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I just noticed after your post that the ebook is $11.99 at B&N while it's $14.99 at Amazon. Is that the first time an ebook has been priced lower at B&N?

Best idea.. go to the Kobo code thread, grab the 40% off code, buy Silkworm from Kobo and tell Amazon to stuff it until they get this stupid dispute settled and Amazon stops playing their asinine games.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Best idea.. go to the Kobo code thread, grab the 40% off code, buy Silkworm from Kobo and tell Amazon to stuff it until they get this stupid dispute settled and Amazon stops playing their asinine games.

Better yet, buy a different book from Amazon that's not affected by the negotiations.

[ProfCrash]

Better yet, buy what you want from where you want and let the businesses hash it out

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Better yet, buy what you want from where you want and let the businesses hash it out

No, no, no ...buy from Amazon

[NickyWithNook]

Originally Posted by Fbone

I just noticed after your post that the ebook is $11.99 at B&N while it's $14.99 at Amazon. Is that the first time an ebook has been priced lower at B&N?

I've noticed that when there's a price difference, Amazon is usually the less expensive, but B&N is occasionally cheaper. (And Amazon hasn't always brought the price down to match it.)

[TCSimpson]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Why self-published authors should side with Hachette

The above makes the blazingly obvious argument that the higher the Big 5 price for a book, the more room indie authors have to charge less and still do reasonably well.

What would really kill indie would be for Amazon to not only drive down Big 5 prices, but also forbid sale of DRM'd books. Then, indie authors would lose not only much of the price incentive, but also those readers who choose indie to avoid DRM.

A weakness of my link is that if Amazon, relatively speaking, wins this negotiation, and a poorer Hachette starts producing lower quality books, that could help indie authors by reducing big publisher competition. But I'm not sure anyone here, other than me, thinks there is significant risk of such a quality decline. And I think it would mostly be seen with non-fiction, due to the higher cost of travel and research.

So indie fiction authors would, on balance, lose big if the Big 5 loses.

Indies would not "lose" by a longshot. Would it affect us? Sure. But it will bother the big publishers way more. In truth, the traditional authors will get more of a shaft by this due to their royalties.

As a member of a huge group of indies many of whom sell thousands of ebooks a month, they all want Amazon to win out. The price issue doesn't bother us as much as it does the big dudes. We have all the flexibility in the world, from price and offering standpoints. Case in point, friend of mine K.C May dropped her 4 book series to 99 cents for a day on Amazon while having it advertised on Bookbub and ENT, it hit no 11 OVERALL in the Amazon store. The next day she had another ad with the price to 2.99, it stayed around 11 to 15. This was this past Friday. After Saturday she raised the price back to 9.99 for the entire series of 4 books and is still selling truck loads.

Most of the successful indies already know that you have to write A LOT, and do so, in order to compete. I don't see the big publishers ever going that route with bundles at that price. In the end, the CONSUMER wins. You might wish to use the reduction of quality argument. I'd say, perhaps not as much as one might think, considering the plethora of freelance editing jobs out there and cover artists.

The article itself? I find parts of it laughable, particularly when she says that freelance editors of indies cater to what the indie wants rather than what is bets for the book. As you can see in the replies, PLENTY of freelance editors took exception to that.

As for DRM, in general, Amazon et al like it to an extent. It helps to lock you in to their hardware.

In the end this is about two big corps swatting at each other for their own best interests. This is business. There is no good or bay guy, simply folks out for their own. Hachette isn't innocent and neither is Amazon. This is not much different than what B&N did last year to S&S but because B&N is a candle to Amazon's flame, there was no real uproar.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Better yet, buy a different book from Amazon that's not affected by the negotiations.

If people want The Silkworm then they should buy it. But they should not buy it from Amazon.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If people want The Silkworm then they should buy it. But they should not buy it from Amazon.

Why not? If that is their store of choice then they should buy it from Amazon.

That is like saying people who want an iPad should buy one but not from Target. Why? Because you don't like Target.

That is kind of a sucky reason for not buying from Target.

Amazon and Hachette are large coorporations who are trying to maximize their profits. This leads to contract disputes that they have to work out.

If you don't like Amazon's position and choose to boycott Amazon over it goodie. If you want to explain to people why you are not buying from Amazon, great. But a blanket statement that people should buy the book from someplace else is kind of silly.

I seriously doubt Hachette is negotiating with the best interest of the buying public in mind. They want to make more money. They are not likely to pass those increased profits to their authors or savings on to readers.

So it is a matter of who you think is more deserving of the money or who you think is going to allow you to maximize your own well being. I'll take Amazon because I like spending less.

[Sydney's Mom]

I checked it out from the Library

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Why self-published authors should side with Hachette

The above makes the blazingly obvious argument that the higher the Big 5 price for a book, the more room indie authors have to charge less and still do reasonably well.

What would really kill indie would be for Amazon to not only drive down Big 5 prices, but also forbid sale of DRM'd books. Then, indie authors would lose not only much of the price incentive, but also those readers who choose indie to avoid DRM.

A weakness of my link is that if Amazon, relatively speaking, wins this negotiation, and a poorer Hachette starts producing lower quality books, that could help indie authors by reducing big publisher competition. But I'm not sure anyone here, other than me, thinks there is significant risk of such a quality decline. And I think it would mostly be seen with non-fiction, due to the higher cost of travel and research.

So indie fiction authors would, on balance, lose big if the Big 5 loses.

I seem to remember a lot nonsense coming from Salon.com about the ebook world.

In this article they rehashed this wonderful gem:

Last year, a federal court in New York ruled that five houses, Hachette included, had illegally colluded to change all of their e-book sales arrangements to something called the agency model, which would allow them to control the prices at which their titles are sold.

I suspect them of making up whatever it takes to put down Amazon and stir up trouble with indies.

The people who buy indie books will continue to do so as long as they are cheaper than Big 5 books -- which they still will be. And anti-DRMniks will have such a sour taste in their mouth about the publishers' past actions that they will avoid the Big 5 on instinct; also, they have gotten into the pattern of buying indies, why stop?

Unless of course Hachette is going to price-match all those indies. Not happening. We may see Big 5 books dropping to the $9.99 price point for new releases, dropping to $6-7 over time, but indie prices tend to be lower already.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by TCSimpson

In truth, the traditional authors will get more of a shaft by this due to their royalties.

So you'll get some shaft, but because a disliked group, or their patrons, will get more shaft, you are still rooting to be shafted.

This is what communists used to (back when there were a lot of them) call false consciousness.

I haven't read this next book -- after writing this, now I'll have to at least start it. But it may present the same kind of idea in a less extreme guise:

http://www.amazon.com/Whats-Matter-K...le+with+kansis

Apologies for it being a politically left of center link. There must be also be some conservative tomes on why people cheer on plutocrats* who would impoverish them, and if I think of one, I'll post it for ideological balance.

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I checked it out from the Library

Can't be, since early in the thread (or maybe it was another recent thread on this issue), someone from the pro-Amazon camp claimed that Hachette won't let libraries have at their new titles for two years.

Of course, it can be, since I also have borrowed it

___________________________________
* Or maybe, rather than pluto-crat, I should have written moon-crat:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin

[pwalker8]

Of course, a federal court ruled no such thing. The big 5 settled the case without admitting guilt, so there was no ruling at all in the matter.

Ultimately, the the real issue is do people buy generic books, or do they buy specific books by specific authors. If I want the most recent JK Rowling book, then I have to buy from her publisher (Hachette). If I want generic stuff to read, there is a ton out there in fanflic and PD. If I am fond of indies, then I have a place to buy that. If people really want JK Rowling's most recent book and there are online book stores that have it (both ebook and hardback), then they will buy it, even if it isn't from Amazon. It will be interesting to see how this turns out.

[TCSimpson]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

So you'll get some shaft, but because a disliked group, or their patrons, will get more shaft, you are still rooting to be shafted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin

Actually I don't want anyone to be shafted. I'm stating what's more likely to happen. The indie folks I mentioned who are tooting for Amazon, (I Really don't care who wins. I mentioned before it's a corporate battle that has neither the best interests of the consumer or the authors at the forefront.) are doing so because if Amazon wins than they feel it's a win for lower-priced ebooks, which they believe is fair to the READERS. The big pub might drop to 4.99 on a new release. I don't ever see them permanently dropping to where the majority of the indies play: at 2.99 and 99 cents.)