Ursula K. Le Guin: “I keep Asking You Not to Buy Books from Amazon”

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by gmw

There's only one thing I don't get about Ursula K. Le Guin's article: Why decry Amazon in particular? Doesn't every bookstore - B&M or online - do exactly the same thing? Walk into, or click into, any book store, and what fills the visual space? Whatever books are currently being pushed as "best sellers".

.

Why?
Probably because in her circles it has become axiomatic, an article of faith, that Amazon is the only cause of all the evils in the (publishing) world and no amount of evidence to the contrary will convince the true believers.

Facts don't matter.
It doesn't matter that it is the publishers who decide which manuscripts they buy and which they ignore. It's all Amazon's fault.

It doesn't matter that it is the publishers who decide which books stay in print and which go out of print. It's all Amazon's fault.

It doesn't matter that it was the publishers favoring Borders and B&N that killed thousands of independent bookstores long before Amazon came about. It's all Amazon's fault.

It doesn't matter that the entire bestseller-driven business model has been around for decades before Bezos set up shop. It's all Amazon's fault.

It doesn't matter that Borders management couldn't find their rear without GPS, ignored the emerging online sales channel, degraded their in-store shopping experience, mismanaged their inventory and ended up in debt to the big publishers, landing in bankruptcy court where the publishers insistence on being paid immediately forced Borders out of restructuring and into outright liquidation. It's all Amazon's fault.

It doesn't matter that B&N bungled their Nook hardware inventory control after forcing a move to (profitless) near cost pricing of readers and tablets and started a death spiral that has cut their ebook market share from 25% to the low single digits in a growing market. That they received hundreds of millions of dollars from Microsoft to deliver and maintain a reading app for Windows and failed to deliver so MS had to take over support of the Win8 app. It's all Amazon's fault.

In LeGuin's world view, Amazon tells publishers which manuscripts to buy and which authors to "disappear" (presumably sending midnight hit squads to kidnap them and dump them in an unmarked mass grave somewhere) and Amazon tells the millions upon millions of readers out there to buy Grisham and Roberts, Patterson and Collins, Rowling and James, King and Child, and *not* ever ever buy... well, LeGuin.

Because, if you go online and look at LeGuin book sales rankings (easy to do, btw) you can see that of the dozens of books she's written since the 1950's, her top seller is the 50 year old LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS (required reading in many liberal arts colleges) and it ranked at a very respectable 10,432 the last time I looked. She also had a title at 30,000, another at 40,000, one at 70,000, and one at 100,000. Those rankings translate to about 26 books per day at 10,000 and 1 book a day at 100,000. If Amazon constitutes half the total trade book market as their detractors claim, that would suggest she is selling about a hundred books a day in the US alone. That is a nice, respectable clip. Of course, the bulk of those sales are mass market paperbacks at $6-7 and a traditional royalty of 8% (clearing her about a half buck each) but the rest are trade paperbacks and hardcover and even some ebooks and audiobooks so she is probably averaging about $2 per sale. $200 bucks a day times 365 days, that's about $75k a year from the US alone.
A nice middle class income.
Of course, it doesn't really compare to the tens of millions that the Patterson bookmill produces each year, the hundreds of millions generated by 50 Shades and Hunger Games, the billions generated by Rowling.

LeGuin is 85 and it is clear by her diatribes that she is clearly not happy that 70 years of writing have yielded her some awards, a PBS TV movie and a SyFy miniseries, a measure of acclaim in some political circles, and a recognizable name in SF&F. Plus what looks to be a nice retirement income.

For many that would be a nice payoff for a lifetime of work.

But LeGuin...

She is unhappy and unwilling to accept the world for what it is.
A world that would rather read about tough guy car chases and boy wizards than about Omelas. That values raunchy softcore "mommy porn" over metaphorical musings of 60's sexual politics.
That is simply *wrong* in her eyes.

And, of course, it is all Amazon's fault.

[darryl]

Le Guin is simply another one in the very limited pool of "successful" traditionally published Big 5 authors who lament the demise of the system under which they lived their glory days. She joins the ranks of Scott Turow, Stephen King and some of the more prominent Authors United signatories, amongst others, as well as the less prominent Authors United Stockholm Syndrome sufferers. She seems to view the world of publishing through a very distorted prism, because her vision of it seems to have little to do with the reality. But she is entitled to her opinion. The fact that she is so wrong-headed, subjective and biased in this instance proves that she is human. Just because she possesses (or perhaps possessed) an outstanding talent does not make her a perfect person or even a better one, nor does it turn her into some sort of ideal role model who we all would do well to emulate and whose opinions should override our own. These are manifestations of the cult of personality in modern mass media, where actors bleat about subjects they know little of, models pine for world peace and 19 year old footballers are expected to stay home on Saturday night drinking tea and ignoring the many young groupies throwing themselves at them.

Le Guin wrote some great books. Those books should be read and enjoyed without regard to her personal opinions. You don't have to be a wonderful person or have unbiased well reasoned and well informed opinions to produce great art.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

You don't have to be a wonderful person or have unbiased well reasoned and well informed opinions to produce great art.

Nope.

But there are times when wise people avail themselves of the opportunity to remain silent and not degrade their reputation and brand. Offhandedly offending vast swaths of your readership (or an entire asian nation or three) might lead some to reevaluate their perception of you, perhaps leading to comparisons with Chauncey Gardiner or Forest Gump.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Nope.

But there are times when wise people avail themselves of the opportunity to remain silent and not degrade their reputation and brand. Offhandedly offending vast swaths of your readership (or an entire asian nation or three) might lead some to reevaluate their perception of you, perhaps leading to comparisons with Chauncey Gardiner or Forest Gump.

Quite right. And sadly, when someone is less than wise, perhaps at the end of an otherwise brilliant career, they behave as you describe. Which impacts on their reputation, but hopefully not on their work. And in the future people say, "Oh yes, she, or he, was a great artist, but ....."

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by darryl

Quite right. And sadly, when someone is less than wise, perhaps at the end of an otherwise brilliant career, they behave as you describe. Which impacts on their reputation, but hopefully not on their work. And in the future people say, "Oh yes, she, or he, was a great artist, but ....."

... Amazon had to have her put down.

[arjaybe]

By my reading, the thing she most despises in her post is BS. As in Best Seller lists. We can safely assume the double entendre is intentional.

[Dazrin]

To me it seems like her argument would be more applicable to most publishers in general rather than Amazon since they are the ones who choose what to publish. Amazon just gets to reap the benefits of them catering to the masses.

It is the publishers who really want to keep paper books around all of which can't be continually in publication. Amazon sells a ton of them and will continue to do so, but it seems like Amazon would much rather have all books be electronic and not have to deal with having stock or with something being out of print.

Also, I love the acronym for Best Sellers lists. Hadn't seen them referred to that way before but it works in so many ways.

[Hellmark]

The difference is that with food, it is exceedingly hard and expensive to keep an organic diet in many regions, compared to Amazon will sell you anything you want. They don't make it more difficult to buy the "good stuff", or raise the price. They have no vested interest in having you buy certain things, but they will put something on the front page if they think you're going to be more likely to buy it. With their program for encouraging webpages to link to items for sale, they in some ways make it easy to get what Le Guin would like, or anyone else.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

.

Also, I love the acronym for Best Sellers lists. Hadn't seen them referred to that way before but it works in so many ways.

The problem with that blanket characterization is that, while many (most?) bestsellers (single word, btw) are the product of front table payola and review hype, some get to be bestsellers the old-fashioned way. More, as the power of the BPHs continues to decline (and with it the power of both hype and payola), the bar for "bestsellerdom" will continue to lower and we're likely to see more worthy titles sneak onto the lists.

As pointed out by others here, annointing *all* popular titles as BS, aka, crap, is an elitist implication that only less than popular (e.g., litfic) titles are any good because the "idiot masses" can't appreciate quality.

Me, I don't read bestsellers as a class but I'm not about to condemn them as a class. Quite a few of my favorite books have managed to sneak onto the lists from time to time, after all.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

The difference is that with food, it is exceedingly hard and expensive to keep an organic diet in many regions, compared to Amazon will sell you anything you want. They don't make it more difficult to buy the "good stuff", or raise the price. They have no vested interest in having you buy certain things, but they will put something on the front page if they think you're going to be more likely to buy it. With their program for encouraging webpages to link to items for sale, they in some ways make it easy to get what Le Guin would like, or anyone else.

Exactly.
Their business model annoys the BPH-friendly establishment because instead of promoting what the publishers are peddling at any given moment, or what "the masses" are buying at the moment, they promote what they think the specific customer wants to buy. They will just as happily sell a high-falluting SJW screed as a fractured fairy tale or a tough guy fantasy just as they will sell you a Sony PlayStation or an XBOX without commenting on which camp you belong to.

All they care about is:

1- happy customers
2- repeat business
3- making money

And that is because 1&2 are the key to 3.
Because they aren't in business for their health but to make mojey.
All of which kinda offends certain classes of people.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Quite a few of my favorite books have managed to sneak onto the lists from time to time, after all.

... and that's all Amazon's fault.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The problem with that blanket characterization is that, while many (most?) bestsellers (single word, btw) are the product of front table payola and review hype, some get to be bestsellers the old-fashioned way.

As she pointed out.

As pointed out by others here, annointing *all* popular titles as BS, aka, crap, is an elitist implication that only less than popular (e.g., litfic) titles are any good because the "idiot masses" can't appreciate quality.

Which she didn't do.

Me, I don't read bestsellers as a class but I'm not about to condemn them as a class. Quite a few of my favorite books have managed to sneak onto the lists from time to time, after all.

Sounds as if you'd see eye-to-eye with her.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

The difference is that with food, it is exceedingly hard and expensive to keep an organic diet in many regions, compared to Amazon will sell you anything you want. They don't make it more difficult to buy the "good stuff", or raise the price. They have no vested interest in having you buy certain things, but they will put something on the front page if they think you're going to be more likely to buy it. With their program for encouraging webpages to link to items for sale, they in some ways make it easy to get what Le Guin would like, or anyone else.

Did people read the article at all? Of course the consequence of getting people used to mediocre books will be that it will be harder to find (if they exist at all) very good books. And she is not talking about literary books.

To me is seems that people in this thread has gotten used to books that are not particular good and now need to protect themselves from realizing that or need to rationalize their behavior. So we are in this thread seeing one of the negative consequences she is fearing.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by arjaybe

Sounds as if you'd see eye-to-eye with her.

Not even close.

I may not read bestsellers *because* they are bestsellers but I don't throw hissy fits if others do. I have trouble enough figuring out how to spend my money to care how others spend theirs.

Besides, I read comics, the occasional romance, and John Ringo novels; I appreciated Tom Kratman's CALIPHATE as a cautionary tale, and prefer space opera over preachy message-laden post-modern fiction. All anathema to her, I'm pretty sure. Worse, I buy almost half my books from Amazon and the rest from BAEN.


If she saw me coming down a sidewalk, she'd instantly cross the street to get away from me. (Which I've experienced once or twice.)

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by tompe

To me is seems that people in this thread has gotten used to books that are not particular good and now need to protect themselves from realizing that or need to rationalize their behavior. So we are in this thread seeing one of the negative consequences she is fearing.

And so who gets to define what is good? The publishers? Because you know they haven't got a good track record either.

I'm kind of tired of self-important people telling me that what I like to read is below me and if I'd just listen to them, my life would be so much better.

Amazon provides me with lots of choices. My local bookstore provides me with lots of choices. And guess what? *I* get to make the choices.