All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend

[Robotech_Master]

The point is, if you pay attention to his post, Scalzi was saying Amazon could still have done exactly the same thing, pulled all Macmillan's books and stuff, but just done a little more than that, like announcing beforehand what they were doing and why, coming out with a press release explaining its side before Macmillan was able to get one off (Amazon still hasn't come out with anything other than that strangely-worded Kindle Team post), and just generally not leaving so many people to get angry in the dark.

Amazon would have looked a lot better to the community at large, and not left authors feeling quite so jerked-around.

As it is now, to everyone except consumers who don't want to pay higher prices, Amazon ends up looking like a spoiled brat. And we all know just how much consumers matter to the big publishing houses, right?

[jmaloney]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

Amazon, for the most part, operates with minimal on-hand stock, and orders-on-demand (carefully figuring out the minimal stock required to meet demand most of the time). The may have just stopped ordering, and within a few days, they're out of product.

It's an incredible coincidence, then, that they managed to sell out all Macmillan titles at exactly the same time.

[Guns4Hire]

Originally Posted by jmaloney

Well, it is different, for a couple of reasons:

1. Costco didn't actually pull anything off their shelves. They simply refused to order any new stock from Coca Cola.
2. Costco actually told their customers up front what they were doing, and why.

Not at my Costco. They pulled every Coke product off the shelves. Not just Coke.

Again not at my Costco. They put up a sign the same day they pulled the products.

At the time I was delivering to Costco everyday and watched it unfold.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

No one knows. The devil is in the details but the details aren't known. I think Coke was gone from Costco for about a month.

I remember when Universal Music took a stand against the iTunes Store.
Went to a month to month deal; started a rival subscription service called Total Music, allied with Microsoft, and got MS to pay them $1 per Zune sold as part of their deal, plus royalties, offered Best Buy, Walmart, and Google DRM-free music to sell (but not Apple)...

[guyanonymous]

Coincidence - possible, but I sincerely doubt they're keeping hundreds of copies of each book on hand. They keep enough to last them between their frequent orders - if I understand things. They may have said, leave the 15 copies of each (or whatever), and accepted the losses. Speculation on my part, I know.

[Connallmac]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

The authors aren't decrying the loss on e-book sales because it's a miniscule portion of their income. It's not really enough money for them to worry about. They are screaming about p-books because a) that's over 90% of their income and b) the p-books aren't part of the dispute.

I'm not getting behind Amazon because their behavior is reprehensible, and that matters more to me than the difference between a 40% and 60% discount off list.

Such short sighted behavior on the part of both Macmillan and their authors. Amazon has been trying to grow the pool of people that actually read in the modern day, while Macmillan and their authors are more worried about protecting a rusty, creaking business model. They may have won this round of the fight and a bigger piece of the pie, but in the long run they are helping to make the pie smaller.

Amazon has been smart enough to realize that in the digital world content owners and sellers are walking a fine line between a reasonable pricing model and the darknet. Kindles and Nooks and the like aren't going away and their owners will continue to desire new content to fill them and this increase in prices, aside from being unreasonable, will come off as just plain tone deaf. People all across the United States are out of work and these people are demanding more money for the same product?!?! Ridiculous. If Ford demanded an extra 50% for the exact same product, without increasing the value, would people line up behind Ford? I think not. I think Ford would price itself right out of business. I for one can't wait until the big six of the publishing industry go gentle into that good night.

[jmaloney]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

Not at my Costco. They pulled every Coke product off the shelves. Not just Coke.

Again not at my Costco. They put up a sign the same day they pulled the products.

That's what I meant about being upfront: at the moment their customers were affected, Costco let them know the situation. Amazon, on the other hand, took TWO DAYS to post any kind of info. And then, it was in the Kindle Community forum (despite the fact that it was physical books that were mainly affected here).

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by Guns4Hire

This is no different than when Coca Cola tried to force Costco to raise their prices. Costco pulled it off their shelves and put up signs saying why they were not carrying Coke anymore. And then eventually put Coke back on its shelves.

Speaking of Costco, they sell a lot of hardcover bestsellers at very low prices...

[Pardoz]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

Ok, but a point everyone seems to be missing is this: This wouldn't have had nearly the impact it did if Macmillan had distributed their author's works (in ebook formats) to places BESIDES Amazon. I couldn't get a straight answer out of anyone as to whether this is due to Amazon demanding exclusivity or Macmillan being negligent of their author's interests.

The answer is almost certainly "Macmillan being negligent of their authors' interests" (at least if you count "publishing those authors' books" as being in the authors' interests). When the titles go back up check what format the files are (if you didn't already know this trick, look at the book description: if it lists a file-size, it's in .mobi format, if it doesn't list a file size, it's in Topaz format). If the books are available as Topaz files, that means Amazon created the e-book themselves (via scan and OCR) because Macmillan refused to distribute an e-book version but grudgingly allowed Amazon to create one. This is why the only commercial e-book versions of a lot of books currently in contract to Macmillan are only available from Amazon, and why the quality of so many of them is so poor, since OCR is still a far-from-perfect technology.

[guyanonymous]

Originally Posted by Pardoz

This is why the only commercial e-book versions of a lot of books currently in contract to Macmillan are only available from Amazon, and why the quality of so many of them is so poor, since OCR is still a far-from-perfect technology.

Thank you! I finally understand (as a non Kindle owner) why I hear Kindle owners complaining about Topaz.

[fugazied]

Hey this fact alone - "I'm the Creative Consultant for this television show, appearing Fridays on Syfy." is reason enough to not read his work. SGU is one of the most poorly written sci-fi shows I have ever seen. Good Sci-fi provides thoughtful creative ideas involving the interaction between scientific devlopments and humans - where science leads us. That show is more of a polished soap opera.

I'm not sure I entirely disagree with this blog post though. Amazon did handle the situation poorly (or did Macmillan just handle it very well?). Consumers don't care about publisher/distributor fights but they do care when thousands of books disappear from a catalogue abruptly.

To put it in context though, it's just a small speed bump in the developement of the e-book industry and Amazon is still one of the leaders in it.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by fugazied

Hey this fact alone - "I'm the Creative Consultant for this television show, appearing Fridays on Syfy." is reason enough to not read his work. SGU is one of the most poorly written sci-fi shows I have ever seen. Good Sci-fi provides thoughtful creative ideas involving the interaction between scientific devlopments and humans - where science leads us. That show is more of a polished soap opera.

All true. But Scalzi's Old Man's War is a quality work, IMO (as are the remaining books in that series, although slightly less so).

[angelad]

This is both sad and amusing.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by angelad

This is both sad and amusing.

Such is life.

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

The point is, if you pay attention to his post, Scalzi was saying Amazon could still have done exactly the same thing, pulled all Macmillan's books and stuff, but just done a little more than that, like announcing beforehand what they were doing and why, coming out with a press release explaining its side before Macmillan was able to get one off (Amazon still hasn't come out with anything other than that strangely-worded Kindle Team post), and just generally not leaving so many people to get angry in the dark.

Amazon would have looked a lot better to the community at large, and not left authors feeling quite so jerked-around.

As it is now, to everyone except consumers who don't want to pay higher prices, Amazon ends up looking like a spoiled brat. And we all know just how much consumers matter to the big publishing houses, right?

I personally don't think that Amazon was posturing or trying to garner public opinion. I think they were convinced it's a battle for the future of their business and they were never going to have a more powerful bargaining position then now.

If they can't change the selling price what can they do to grow market share or keep market share? There is very little service value they can add to a website. I don't think they believe they can grow market share by building better devices then Apple.

Apple can grow market share with this deal because they currently have 0%. People will buy books from iBooks because they're already buying music, video, apps, TV shows from iTunes.

I'll be interested to see why Amazon caved. They've either decided that time is on their side and they can wait it out for a better deal or they have some other plan. Maybe they intend to battle it legally. Maybe they are waiting for the other publishers to jump on the bandwagon and have politicians jump on them as a cartel. Maybe they think they can offer rebates like Fictionwise.

My fear is that they will go down the route of exclusive deals to grow market share.