Why do some authors only offer their ebooks on Amazon?

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Big corps are certainly not the ones who invented keeping all of their employees below full-time status to save money. Mom & Pop, local grocery stores/restaurants, and small manufacturing made hay off that tactic long before mega corps existed. Still do.

Yes and those mom and pop shops aren't run by people with 9 figure net worths, while their average worker is in poverty.

Restaurants are their own kind of special hell in the US, which really gets totally off the rails of a discussion of typical businesses

[cfrizz]

Whether a big corporation or mom & pop establishments the only thought of the owners is THEIR own profit and getting it any way, they can and their first way of doing it is by screwing over their employees.

What all are forgetting is that without employees they end up with nothing. That is being made clear loud and clear across the country right now as people are quitting current positions to go places for more money leaving their old businesses strapped for workers to keep their businesses going.

Some have gone out of business permanently. Hospitals, are hurting because staff are quitting all over the place, and since a certain amount of staff is necessary, they run the risk of running afoul of state and fed regulations if they keep doing admissions while under-staffed.

Hotels, restaurants etc. are all desperate for workers. Pay your employees well and they might stay. Right now all bets are off. I have no sympathy for any of them whether large or small.

[Apache]

So, you seem to think all mom & pop businesses are screwing over their employees and customers in the name of profit.
Apache

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally, I would avoid the epub=>epub conversion. calibre has the nasty habit of re-organizing the CSS, adding in it's own classes and, at time, splitting files that have multiple header tags. If I have to edit, I find it easier to start with the kindleunpack generated epub.

Check the output epub from kindleunpack and then decide if you want/need to edit it. Please note that many of the KF8 files make use of epub3 features and media queries that epub2 renderers (looking at you, RMSDK) will disregard leading to some odd looking bits and bobs.

The media queries don't work for ePub or KePub as they are Amazon media queries. I usually just delete them as I find most are not needed.

I prefer to go KF8 > ePub using KindleUnpack and edit from there. If it's enough of a mess, I'll try a KF8 > ePub conversion using Calibre.

[library addict]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Yep, calling it "cheating" is risible . Calling it "effective" otoh, would be less tinfoil-hat-hysterical and more objective. This shown by the fact that I now get several emails EACH WEEK from Kobo urging me to join their equivalent scheme. I've bought a few books that are available in Kobo Plus and therefore RK has decided I need to reminded at least every other day that they have an "all you can read" scheme. I dislike Amazon for many reasons, but there's nothing unethical or "cheating" about a subscription library, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then RK is flattering Amazon well.

The difference is that Kobo does not require or ask authors to be exclusive to Kobo for their books to be in their lending program. So an ebook can be in this program and still available to buy on other platforms. Unlike with Amazon who requires the ebook to only be available on Amazon.


FTR I am not in KU or the Kobo subscription service. But authors and readers know/can learn the ins and outs and publish their books/buy books wherever they choose.

I don't tend to buy ebooks from Amazon because I like the epub format. And I am bummed when an author I really like goes exclusive. But then I still have the choice to buy the ebook at Amazon if I really want to read it, so it's not a case of I never buy ebooks there. I usually use Kobo or Google Play.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Yes and those mom and pop shops aren't run by people with 9 figure net worths, while their average worker is in poverty.

Irrelevant. Bad business practices are bad business practices. No one gets a free pass.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Irrelevant. Bad business practices are bad business practices. No one gets a free pass.

Exactly! All do harm in the name of profit and greed.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Irrelevant. Bad business practices are bad business practices. No one gets a free pass.

Both are bad, but one does more harm than the other by virtue of its size. So pardon us while we fight the bigger fight, the smaller one can wait.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

So pardon us while we fight the bigger fight,

Nope. You'll have to do so without my pardon, there, Don Quixote.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Nope. You'll have to do so without my pardon, there, Don Quixote.

Hardly tilting at windmills. You admit that staffing to avoid granting benefits is an issue in both mega corporations and mom and pop shops. One of these is a bigger problem than the other since one can take advantage of loopholes in tax law, etc. while the other is generally at the mercy of a landlord.

It’s simple triage, you treat the multiple gunshot wound before you treat the stab victim then you treat the stab victim.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by catsknit

There were very few full time employees at his store at all, likely to avoid paying benefits.

Same thing with my son who works at Fred Meyer (now owned by Kroger). They're short on help but he (and all or almost all of his fellow hourly employees) aren't scheduled for full time. Most of them work full time, sometimes overtime, but the benefits only kick in if they're "scheduled" for full time. What they do is schedule him for six hours (or so) a day but then ask him to to stay another two or three hours. They're about to lose him as he's been offered jobs by local businesses and he's getting less and less willing to play this game and work the extra hours. Now he usually just tells them he's made plans (unless he feels sorry for his supervisor, which happens a couple times a week).

[gmw]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Hardly tilting at windmills. You admit that staffing to avoid granting benefits is an issue in both mega corporations and mom and pop shops. One of these is a bigger problem than the other since one can take advantage of loopholes in tax law, etc. while the other is generally at the mercy of a landlord.

It’s simple triage, you treat the multiple gunshot wound before you treat the stab victim then you treat the stab victim.

I'd also add that one of the complaints you see about the way big business treat their employees is that they do so while reporting billions of dollars in profit. There are not too many mom & pop businesses earning billions, and there are a significant number where mom & pop struggle to pay themselves an income commensurate with their work.

Not all big business is bad, but their legal obligations to shareholders tends to weight their behaviour toward maximising profits rather than benefiting employees. So the game is fixed to a significant extent.

mom & pop and other small businesses are much more variable because their circumstances vary so much. I don't doubt there are some that treat their employees badly, but there are others that are more than fair. If we broke Amazon up into separate small mom & pop businesses then at least some of the employees would be well treated. (And there would be many more employees due to loss of efficiency!) And this, to me at least, is one reason why we hold large companies to a higher standard. The single entity has a much larger affect across the board than any single mom & pop organisation, and the truly huge organisations have so much influence that they distort the logic on which capitalism is founded. We have seen in the past, and we see now, there are some businesses that have grown so large that their failure would have devastating consequences.

The whole supply and demand thing tends to play out reasonably well while ever no single entity has the ability to sway the entire market. (And just to keep this on an MR keel, think Hari Seldon's psychohistory.) The earlier suggestion of employees exerting influence by going where the pay is better can be effective when there are many employers in that market - then the employers are truly forced to react to availability of employees - but it is much less effective when mega-corporations effectively dictate the minimum wage. Even if others are in the market, mega-corporations define the level of efficiency required to stay in the market.

[DiapDealer]

We'll be having this conversation next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that.

Windmills.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by gmw

I'd also add that one of the complaints you see about the way big business treat their employees is that they do so while reporting billions of dollars in profit. There are not too many mom & pop businesses earning billions, and there are a significant number where mom & pop struggle to pay themselves an income commensurate with their work.

Not all big business is bad, but their legal obligations to shareholders tends to weight their behaviour toward maximising profits rather than benefiting employees. So the game is fixed to a significant extent.

In the United States, the food stamp program is subsidizing Wal-Mart because they pay such piss-poor wages. This is a company that makes well over 100 billion profit per year.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

We'll be having this conversation next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. And the year after that.

Windmills.

At this point you’re the one tilting at windmills in the form of those trying to voice an opinion against mega corporations. The threat those corporations represent is real and has already had some of its affects seen.

The long-standing nature of the problem doesn’t make it less real. A more fitting literary analogy would be David vs Goliath.