Amazon says Hachette should lower ebook prices, pay authors more

I worry about the day when Amazon decides that the opposition have been crushed sufficiently for them to start 'leveraging' their monopoly, and consumers, publishers and authors have to dance to their tune. Right now, I like Amazon, but the day could arrive when they resemble total bastards.

and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books,

I am looking forward to the day the EU decides this is illegal and sues everyone who tried to implement it.

Paper vs ebooks

I'll take the paper thanks. The secondary market is good, allowing people to see books they wouldn't look at if the only preview was a website database. The cost of paper is, I understand minimal next to author and marketing costs. Ebooks are fine for books you don't care about - Nancy Drew #153 perhaps or a book club book you didn't want to read anyway. No paper mostly saves amazon delivery costs.

What we really want is an ebook emailed and the paper copy put in the post. The price differene between ebook and paper book is not enough to justify losing the paper version. Amazon can take a hike on this one.

Memories of the way publishers like Hachette used to fix book prices (Net Book Agreement) mean that I have little sympathy for them. They don't give a toss about their authors; all they care about is that they missed a trick somewhere and someone else is making the money.

We pay Hachette for their good judgement

The traditional publisher and the author do a lot of work together that ends up giving us a better book. I am not sure that Amazon deserves a similar share for the work it does to deliver an ebook.

Hachette, and all the other traditional publishers. know they are taking risks, and giving us a better text, filtering the drivel-storm, is something they have to do to limit their risk.

Amazon doesn't do any filtering with the Kindle Direct model, and, believe me, you can see it. All you have to do is buy a few cheap ebooks and you will see it. There is a filter that comes from forcing the author to deal with the US tax system. but that's no effort for them.

It's a waste of my time to try to sell my writing through Amazon. I get better filtering from giving my stories away on fan-fiction sites. The Kindle is a nice enough tool, and Amazon run a decent, wide-ranging, internet retail operation, but no way are they a publishing company.

Dare I post a link, even a weird one? What's the point? The problem is finding stories that you like. I think that Google might matter more to authors than Amazon ever can.

None of Amazon's business

"While we believe 35% should go to the author and 35% to Hachette, the way this would actually work is that we would send 70% of the total revenue to Hachette, and they would decide how much to share with the author," Amazon said. "We believe Hachette is sharing too small a portion with the author today, but ultimately that is not our call."

Actually, Amazon, none of that is your call other than how you set your own price.

Here's a revolutionary retail idea: the publisher does a deal with its author, then you do a deal with the publisher for buying their products off them. If you don't think you can make a profit, then don't buy the books (e-books or otherwise); otherwise charge whatever you feel is right for you. That's how it works in other retail businesses. All this caring about e-book customers and authors is BS; you seem to be quite happy for counterfeit goods to be sold through your platform, since they continue to be sold even after conned customers flag it up in reviews, and I have no doubt that you screw suppliers on price as hard as you can like any other retailer. So less of the self-serving BS, please.

If Amazon is convinced that it's right…

… it can take the initiative by contracting and publishing authors directly. Anything else is just bluster.

I said it before and I'll say it again:

The so-called pricing fixing case against Apple et al was never about helping the consumer; it was always about positioning Amazon to dictate to the publishers what the publishers and the authors would get paid for selling their wares.

Saying one thing, doing more

Amazon wants a third for retailing the book. I'm not really interested in the %, but in a system that could be simplified as:

Advance - Write - Sell

... There is some logic there somewhere.

However, to be fair to publishers (though I don't really see why), Amazon is not - and is never going to be - happy to stick to one piece of the chain.

The day one of Jeff's boys gets hold of a machine that can write stuff that sells, is the day before the only books to buy at Amazon are written by that machine.

There are some great thoughts written up above mine - A very good topic and little debate (shame it isn't more popular). I think the point I would most like to add to it is that your customer is, honestly, never wrong. Lots and lots of other things; but never wrong. However hard to take that is for everyone else involved.

"While we believe 35% should go to the author.."

Really, Amazon ?

Well I believe 70% should go to the author. You and the publisher can argue about the 30% that is left.

As far as I'm concerned, Amazon should not get more than 5% for simply storing a digital package and selling it over and over and over again.

So you see, Amazon, if you really care about those poor authors, you can do something about it.

I love the freedom of finding my books online, paper and electronic, And Amazon is currently ahead of the game in this. Fair enough, they saw the way and invested.

The publishers exercised buy up & cartel = monopoly. Then, of course, screwed the authors and everyone else to maximise their profits. Happily tech and Amazon have rendered their business model redundant.

Amazon will try and emulate with their own monopoly, its the way things are. but they're unlikely to achieve the stranglehold that their resentful successors enjoyed