The Kindle Chronicles discussion

Hi, Len,

As with you, I find myself wanting to be done with the Amazon-Hachette controversy, yet I'm drawn to each new turn (in the road? of the screw?).

Reading the Authors United open letter, published Sunday in the NY Times (which cost $104,000, says the Times, and is paid for by several of the more successful authors on the list), brought up some questions.

Full disclosure: I'm an Amazon Prime member, and I've chosen to be part of the Amazon ecosystem in part to keep my e-book purchases (i.e., licenses) corralled in collections. Besides, the Kindle Paperwhite is the best stand-alone reader out there.

1. The letter accuses Amazon of "refusing to discount the prices of many Hachette authors' books." But, if news reports are reliable, one of the issues the current negotiations concern is whether Amazon will have to abide by the Agency Model, which would mean the company COULD NOT discount Hachette e-books. If discounts are a good thing, why support a publisher trying to end them for retailers?

2. The letter presents the principle that "no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want."

This suggests, I think, that books are not just commodities. Safeway wants you to buy its house brand of green beans, not Green Giant (though it will sell you Green Giant if you must). But books are different, the letter implies--Safeway may make Green Giant unavailable if there is a dispute with the supplier or manufacturer, but published books should be subject to no such tactics.

One would guess, then, that Barnes and Noble's action against Simon & Schuster of a few years ago, and indie bookstores' refusal to sell Amazon imprint titles (distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; see http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...), will be the subject of additional "open letters."

3. If books are not (merely) a commodity, they do participate in the marketplace in some way. They are called "units" and that information is used to calculate best-seller lists. Publishers themselves use the term, and choose also whether and how to promote this or that book, and what royalties to pay. Only now are major publishers testing various business models for libraries, but for a long time the majors were blocking libraries' abilities to provide e-books for patrons. Does this by extension violate the stated "no block" principle in the letter?

4. The letter's fourth point is that (oh, the horror!) Amazon suggests "on some Hachette authors' pages that readers might prefer a book from a non-Hachette author instead." Apparently customers can still buy the Hachette e-book for immediate download, but might be told of a "delay" in print delivery. Amazon itself creates the author pages on its site, and presumably can recommend other, similar, books--which also, of course, IS a way to stick it to the author. But what we don't know (has anyone checked?) is whether Amazon ever recommends other books on non-Hachette author pages? In other words, is this just something Amazon does to Hachette authors, or to authors of books whose publishers are in negotiation with Amazon?

I'd want also to know how indie bookstores handle this--when a customer wants an Amazon-imprint book that has to be special-ordered, do handsellers ever say "but could I suggest THIS book over here that we DO have in stock?" I guess what I'm saying here is that the fourth point sounds more like how business is done rather than Amazon's efforts to sink one of the Big 5. Yes, Amazon presumably does want what it does (all the tactics including downplaying of Hachette titles) to "hurt" publishers enough to encourage an agreement with Amazon. But because Amazon is not blocking the sale of Hachette books (just pre-orders when customers can't get the book yet anyway), it's hard to see these measures as taking books "hostage" (as the letter claims).

5. The letter points out that authors' incomes are being diminished by Amazon's delaying shipping and (again, presumably) not providing for pre-orders, and not offering the discounts customers get with other publishers. There's no mention that Amazon has offered (and Russ Grandinetti emphasized that it's a serious offer) to put authors' income (contributed by Amazon and Hachette) in escrow or distributed to charities. Hachette roundly rejected the offer yet, so far as I know, has not disputed the claim by Amazon that the $9.99 e-book price point actually creates MORE revenue for the publisher (and author) than higher prices. It's curious, of course, since the letter complains that Amazon is not discounting Hachette books ENOUGH. Does that only refer to print books?

6. It would be great to have more "full disclosure" statements, especially in "news" reports. The New York Times, of course, has one of the few remaining free-standing newspaper book review sections, and has deep connections with New York publishing. I'm not saying that that automatically biases news reports, only that the Times does NOT have the same kind of access to Amazon. The Times only rarely reviews books BY indie authors (in contrast to the appearance of many news stories ABOUT such authors), and fashions itself as a kind of cultural gatekeeper. Which is fine. I'd just like the Times and other outlets (both pro and con Amazon) to show their cards.

The Wall Street Journal, of course, is part of a publishing company, News Corp, that also includes HarperCollins and its imprints. The two are not independent of each other, and that IS made clear in WSJ news stories (and, I think, editorials). Knowing that, and knowing that WSJ doesn't have a direct line into Amazon, I can recognize when WSJs editorials happen to be in the best (perceived) interests of HarperCollins (or not). I'd like to see an "or not" editorial, come to think of it. :-)

7. Finally, DRM. One of the unspoken points in the open letter is something Juli Monroe, the interview guest, talked about. Publishers are afraid of pirated e-books and so are moved to protect them electronically, locking consumers into this or that ecosystem. (That makes for a lot of frustration; when Fictionwise was shut down, I couldn't get the books I had purchased to show up in my B&N library; and I bought a Kobo e-ink reader in hope of reading Nook books--but though both use .epub, they have different DRM so there's no interoperability!)

So the principle that says "don't block the sale of books to customers" seems to be violated when publishers insist on DRM--meaning that if you're in Kobo's e-book ecosystem you can't buy from B&N or Amazon.

If the data from Tor.com's experiment shows that pirating of e-books is not an issue, it might be fairer to authors to remove DRM and then readers could get their books from any source (meaning readers wouldn't be so reliant on Amazon if another site offered a better deal).

But other sites don't have the discoverability oomph that Amazon has, and so implicitly the open letter WANTS something like Amazon, yet also wants Amazon to stop "harming the livelihood of authors...." Is Hachette NOT "harming the livelihood of authors" through the protracted negotiations? If that's the position of the letter, then how can it claim not to take a position? Isn't the letter saying something like "do what Hachette wants and all will be well"? As an Amazon customer and a voracious reader, I might ask:

Could it just be that helping authors in the way the open letter suggests would actually harm the livelihood of READERS?

Cheerily,

Dan

Dan,

In regards to your point #4, advertising non-Hachette books on Hachette author pages, I just looked at my own Author page on Amazon. On the right side of the page there are several links to other Author pages with the heading "Customer also bought items by." I looked at the Author page of a Hachette author and saw the same sidebar. I don't know if this is what they were referring to in the letter, but it appears to be a standard feature for Author pages.

There were a mix of Hachette and non-Hachette authors suggested on the Hachette author page, but interestingly, no Hachette authors suggested on my page. Make of that what you will. :)

And don't even get me started on the Fictionwise debacle. Only a handful of my books from my library made the transition to B&N (and those were freebies I didn't care about). Had I not stripped the DRM in advance and backed everything up, I would have lost practically everything.

Your point on DRM making readers dependent on Amazon only applies to the savvy ones who bother to learn Calibre. While obviously I'm against DRM, I don't think removing unilaterally it would necessarily lead to people shopping on other sites. I do almost all my book buying from Amazon because of their better customer experience, and obviously, I know how to strip DRM and am able to buy from everywhere. Mostly, I don't bother because Amazon makes it easy.

I like your point that authors want something like Amazon but don't want Amazon. I think that's a succinct way of putting it.

Hi, Juli,

I think I remember seeing, on the Amazon page for a Hachette book, something more than "customers also bought." It was a link above the book listing saying something like "you might also be interested in..." and showing a cheaper book in the same genre. Again, my memory can be faulty here, but I don't recall seeing that too often (then again, I didn't look for it).

Regarding Fictionwise, your comment suggests why I want a healthy Amazon bookstore. Yes, we can buy (license) e-books all over the Internet, but unless one keeps a list, and updates it often, it's hard to remember where something is. Is that a Nook book? Kobo? iBooks? Something site-specific (like Tor.com)? I know Calibre can keep lists, but purchasing a "hot deal" is spur-of-the-moment and it's awfully disappointing to buy the same book twice. You see where I'm going with this. Amazon reminds me. Many have been the times that Amazon has said, "you already purchased this." Whew!

Amazon does make it easy, and getting rid of DRM might mean price and customer experience can vy for a chance to win the day. That is, if I'm invested in the Kindle DRM ecosystem, publishers won't be able to pull me away to their own sites even if they figure out how to serve customers better. Get rid of DRM, and maybe they have a shot!

Part of a good customer experience (necessary but not sufficient?) is a good selection. How can we follow the long tail if the HarperCollins site only offers HC books? Presumably the Big 5 don't want to ask patrons to go to a dozens different sites to get their books. That's not very efficient. So a big site like Amazon would seem something good.

But, as with every such enterprise, there is a price to pay for publishers (and authors), and we customers get caught. But if Amazon is correct, publishers and authors will GAIN if many e-books from the Big 5 are $9.99. (But publishers don't want to pilot this since the public would get used to the price!)

Amazon withholding book pre-orders may be one of the few ways it has to leverage the publisher. As Amazon has expanded into other media, and is a media publisher, this kind of back-and-forth may well be more common.

Oh, well, enough. I'll just pre-order a Disney flick and forget about Hachette.... :-)

Cheerily,

Dan