back to article Amazon smacks back at Hachette in e-book pricing battle: We're doing it for the readers

Amazon’s latest PR stunt for its contract dispute with publisher Hachette has seen the mega etailer establish a “Readers United” group in response to writers’ group “Authors United” to put pressure on the publishing house to lower its book prices. This comes after writers including Philip Pullman and John Grisham took out a …

  1. ratfox

    What is Hachette contributing?

    Not that I like Amazon's tactics, but what is Hachette contributing to the authors it is publishing? Is this something that Amazon would be able to provide by themselves?

    I'm aware that publishers review books, do some editing and choose artwork, and should be compensated for this, but the vast majority of what they used to do (advancing money to actually print thousands of books and distribute them world wide) can be done vastly more efficiently with e-books.

    Is it really justified for them to get as much money as the author?

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: What is Hachette contributing?

      "Is it really justified for them to get as much money as the author?"

      Paper books will be around for a bit yet so paper needs to get smeared with carbon on an industrial scale and the resulting atoms still need to get shifted.

      Having written about 25k words for a published non-fictional project I can say that working with an editor has significant value. Editorial services could be provided by any publisher of course.

      Do we *really* want one publisher?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We all moved to sharepoint.

      A publishing house does more than just the editing and artwork. Have you any idea how many would-be authors send in their manuscripts? These need to be examined and, in most cases, politely declined (hence the rise of the self-published author, another one of Amazon's strategies). The ones that do make it through this process will need to be guided and nurtured. Then, eventually, the work will need to be edited and possibly rewritten, after which it is still a gamble to see how the public will respond. For every J. K. Rowling there are thousands of J. K. Nothings... Then there's the book promotion, the costs of operating and maintaining a printing press, royalties... I'm not saying tiems are hard for publishers, but there's a lot more going on in the background than you may realise.

      But let's see this for what it is: Amazon wants to sell stuff. They don't care what it or for how much, they just want to sell stuff. The paperback may have proved to be a financial success, yes, but as Woolf and Joyce feared, it has lowered the quality of writing. The popularity of the paperback means that most of the money is made from selling volume, whereas it used to be that people would put down money for a good book. Pushing down the prices on ebooks will mean even lower prices for authors, meaning less time for research and working out ideas. To see where this might lead, duckduckgo "japanese romance ebooks": three dollars worth of useless mush written in less than two weeks.

      1. Kubla Cant

        Re: We all moved to sharepoint.

        @Buck Futter The paperback may have proved to be a financial success, yes, but as Woolf and Joyce feared, it has lowered the quality of writing.

        Where's the evidence for this? What unit is quality of writing measured in, and who measured the pre-paperback score?

        The difference in price between paperbacks and hardbacks these days is quite small. I suspect it's more a matter of market segmentation than production cost. The printed pages are identical, and binding is probably done by machine for both formats - few hardbacks seem to be stitched. Most of the hard cover edition is probably produced for libraries.

        Being a bit of a book-fetishist, I like to buy hard cover books. Interestingly, they are much easier to find on Amazon than in bookshops.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: We all moved to sharepoint.

          KC: "Being a bit of a book-fetishist, I like to buy hard cover books. Interestingly, they are much easier to find on Amazon than in bookshops."

          Personally, I can't stand softcover books as they seem to disintegrate on the shelf; cheap glue and acidic paper. eBooks are worth even less than that, maybe $1 - $2. I've seen silly little ebook files on offer for *more* than I paid for several examples of hardcover books sign by the Moon-walking astronaut himself.

      2. Headley_Grange Silver badge

        Re: We all moved to sharepoint.

        Rowling was turned down by half a dozen or so publishers and her agent thought the book was dead in the water. She only got a deal because the guy at Bloomsbury did her agent a favour, then couldn't be bothered to read it and gave the m/s to his kid. I wonder how many of those J.K. Nothings might be as bankable as Potter.

        Remember - these poor publishers who think they, authors and readers need defending from Amazon are the same publishers who implemented the Net Book Agreement which fixed the price of books across the UK and prevented bookshops from discounting. Now they are trying to do the same with eBooks, but the problem is that instead of having a few relatively small book shops to bully they've come up against Amazon. Some might see Amazon as just a bigger bully (although as a reader I don't - yet.).

        VAT apart - I don't understand why an eBook should be more expensive than a paper book. Even ignoring the savings in manufacture, storage, distribution, over-production, pulping, etc., readers only pay to rent these books. There's no second-hand market, it's very difficult to lend them to friends and family and they can't be left as an inheritance. So the market is automatically larger for an e-book than for a paper book because of the limitations of use*. Hachette and Amazon appear to have very different approaches to making money. Hachette want a protected market where they can charge what they want and make loads of money on each sale whereas Amazon are happy to make fractions of a penny profit on massive throughput. As a reader I prefer the Amazon approach cos I can get more books for the same money. For me the jury's still out on whether or not this will result in an Amazonopoly which acts to the detriment of authors - and thereby readers.

        *I've heard that Calibre might help!

        1. Al Jones

          Re: We all moved to sharepoint.

          @ Headley_Grange: "Amazon are happy to make fractions of a penny profit on massive throughput."

          30% of $10 is hardly fractions of a penny.

          The real question that authors, publishers and readers should be asking Amazon is why there isn't a fixed transaction charge for selling an e-book. It doesn't cost Amazon any more to sell a $3 e-book than a $30 e-book, so why should Amazon take a bigger cut from the more expensive e-book?

          1. Tom 13

            Re: 30% of $10 is hardly fractions of a penny.

            You can't count that as profit until you've taken into account all other expenses for the company. If you read Amazon's financials they are abysmal. They make a profit just often enough to not be forced into bankruptcy.

          2. Tom 13

            Re: why there isn't a fixed transaction charge for selling an e-book.

            This on the other hand is a very good question. They won't answer it of course, because the elephant in the room is that Amazon doesn't actually give a damn about authors, publishers or readers. They're just intent on dominating the market.

      3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: We all moved to sharepoint.

        The popularity of the paperback means that most of the money is made from selling volume, whereas it used to be that people would put down money for a good book.

        This is utter bollock because it is only valid in a world in which people are force to buy cheap paperbacks AND NOTHING ELSE, like in a fantasy world made up by Marx-slingers.

        In the real world, you can get hardcover first editions if you have confidence in the author shelling out $$$ for immediate gratification, and you can get books in hardcover-only which are very, very expensive.

        To see where this might lead, duckduckgo "japanese romance ebooks": three dollars worth of useless mush written in less than two weeks.

        There must be a market for this and that market does not exist because excellent authors are forced into paperbacks and need to write crap in a hurry. It's the standard fare of train station bookshops and airport shops.

        Also, supply and demand.

    3. MyffyW Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: What is Hachette contributing?

      Marketing - hateful word until you realise it's value for your own work. Always nice to have somebody shouting on your behalf.

      I'm no fan of Hachette, but Amazon are hardly on the side of the little guy either. A plague on both their publishing houses.

      1. h3

        Re: What is Hachette contributing?

        Amazon is on my side for the most part. (Almost everyone else is on the side of anybody but the customer which is a breath of fresh air).

    4. Anthony 13

      Re: What is Hachette contributing?

      And what exactly is Amazon contributing for its 30%??? Nothing to assist in the creative (or marketing) process, I suspect...

      * And yes, the same can be said of the other digital players.

      1. Pristine Audio

        Re: What is Hachette contributing?

        >And what exactly is Amazon contributing for its 30%??? Nothing to assist in the creative (or marketing) process, I suspect...

        A vast global market for the product, coupled with delivery infrastructure, reading software and products, and a retailing environment that works brilliantly well.

        Of course there's no reason why Hachette (and others) couldn't do the same thing, but having just visited their website I saw nothing to suggest I could buy a book from them directly, electronically or otherwise. Why is this?

    5. David Kelly 2

      Re: What is Hachette contributing?

      While you are at it what is Amazon contributing?

      And why is it permissible for Amazon to behave this way and not Apple? Apple let the publisher set the selling price of which Apple would take 30% but on the condition no one else be given a better deal. Amazon is demanding to set the price and if the publisher balks at Amazon's demands then Amazon does everything short of dropping the publisher. Amazon claims their behavior is simply negotiating tactics but it has every earmark of policing a monopoly in their favor.

    6. SundogUK Silver badge

      Re: What is Hachette contributing?

      Paper and shipping are cheap. Editors and proof-readers are expensive. Charlie Stross estimates 50% of a books value is in the editing/proof-reading/marketing etc... Publishers earn their money.

      1. Tom 13

        Re: Publishers earn their money.

        Maybe, maybe not. A great many of them have certainly made a hash of publishing decent books. I never actually entered the writing market although it was once my intended field. I do know from people in the industry that a decent editor is worth his weight in platinum.

        But that is actually irrelevant. The relevant question is: Who owns the book? Surely the author is the first person to whom ownership should be assigned. Not the reader, not the publisher, and certainly not Amazon. Now, in order to sell the book the author may have transferred some or all rights for a limited or unlimited time to the Publisher. At which point the publisher has some or complete ownership of the book. Which means Amazon is attempting to extort the publisher and the author who are the actual owners of the book.

    7. Arcadian

      Re: What is Hachette contributing?

      Publishers invest in authors and the books they write. They pay out quite a lot of money and company resources in advance of publication.

      1. They normally pay an advance before publication. This buys authors the time to write in, and/or access to research materials, etc. Speaking from experience, I can say that this is very valuable.

      2. They pay for editorial work, including copy-editing (which includes checking the text minutely for errors); this is quite a large task.

      The above expenses apply every bit as much to e-books as to printed books.

      Furthermore:

      3. Publishers are responsible for the design of the printed book. They also commission cover artwork, or pay licensing fees for already existing images.

      E-books also need cover art, and they need to be designed. And the design has to be appropriate to the medium: as a rule you can't just convert the design for the printed book.

      4. Publishers pay to have the book typeset.

      The equivalent for e-books is converting the text-file to the required e-formats. Sounds easy, doesn't it? But I have dabbled in making epubs, and to get them working properly and looking pretty is fiddlier than you would expect.

      Moreover, there is no one e-format. There are Kindle files and epubs. Worse, there is more than one flavour of epub. For the professional look, a file needs to be differently tweaked for each brand of e-reading device. This is all extra hassle and expense to the publisher. Type-setting for print, meanwhile, only has to be done once.

      The above comments mainly relate to trade or commercial publishing. Hachette is a trade publisher. Academic publishing is a different ballgame.

  2. Michael Hawkes

    Not for readers

    Amazon's doing it for profit, not for readers. I think they don't care whether people read books or not, as long as they keep buying them.

    Since Disney owns Marvel and the future of the Star Wars films, it will be interesting to see what happens with that dispute.

    1. Kubla Cant

      Re: Not for readers

      @Michael Hawkes Amazon's doing it for profit, not for readers. I think they don't care whether people read books or not, as long as they keep buying them.

      Whereas Waterstone's, Blackwell's, Foyle's and the independent bookshop in town would be happy to sell books at a loss as long as people keep reading them.

      1. Meerkatjie

        Re: Not for readers

        The only ones in it for the public are public libraries, everyone else is in it for themselves (to varying degrees)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    See Audible for an example of Amazon's plans

    I don't care about Hachette vs Amazon in terms of who gets how much of the money. My concern is the growing power of Amazon.

    I know it's a trendy concern and there are things to be said for and against all sides, but I look at Audible (owned by Amazon) and I see where Amazon is heading.

    To begin with they were on the side of the authors and offered good Audible rates of between 50% and 90% on an escalating basis.

    Then as the market grew they consolidated their lead until earlier this year they felt able to drop the rates to a non-escalating 40% (or 25% if the title is not exclusive to them).

    Given that Amazon's stated policy (to investors) is to run at a loss to gain market share, at which point they turn on the profits, the Audible rate drop is very much symptomatic of where they will go with ebooks.

    Hachette is a company. Amazon is a company. Neither are friends. Neither are enemies. They are faceless entities and should be judged (without undue emotion) on their actions. Audible shows where the Amazon way leads, and it's a future where a powerful Amazon nails author royalties to the floor.

    1. amazing stories

      Re: See Audible for an example of Amazon's plans

      the standard formula is: provide services at market-breaking prices until you have gained domination in market share (a point at which those selling into the market MUST do business with you in order to survive) and then squeeze your captive market for every last tenth of a cent you can get out of it. Use your enormous profits to continue to maintain your position as dominant - out sell where you can, buy out where you can't intimidate and - continue to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.

      I know it seems outlandish, but I expect the future of Amazon (if allowed to continue its path) to be to bring authors in-house and pay them a fixed salary for "works made for hire" (and what starving indie isn't going to jump on that offer). The rights grab will be egregious, the contracts will be multi-year, the content will only be available from one source, and then the authors will be kicked to the curb when Amazon's computer-based authors (who they don't have to pay at all) are up to snuff.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Here is an idea....

    ...can we get the government to sort out the bloody VAT fiasco.

    Paper book = No VAT

    eBook = VAT

    Right there is a f'ing 20% difference.

    1. A K Stiles
      Unhappy

      Re: Here is an idea....

      It sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately they can't. As I understand it, VAT on ebooks is mandated from 'Europe' so the UK government have to charge it... of course, 20% of ebook sales to the treasury is great incentive to continue to shrug, wave their hands in the air and mutter 'Europe eh - what can you do?'

      1. Toltec

        Re: Here is an idea....

        You know how the government will solve that don't you?

        Yep, add VAT to printed books too.

  5. Anonymous Cowerd

    There's a great dissection of the email here :

    http://matt-wallace.com/?p=326

  6. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

    Can't we all get along or Imma just gonna download.

  7. Joe Harrison

    I don't get it

    If you look inside one of these here "e-books" do you know what it is filled with? Words, that's what.So many words in fact that it reminds you strongly of that "interweb" thingy which is also ankle deep in words. What is the difference between e-book internet words and normal internet words? Apart from one being 20% vattable.

    In any case wasn't The Internet supposed to link us all together and eliminate the need for middle men such as Hachazon?

  8. Steve Todd

    Amazon want their cake and to eat it

    They want the fixed profit margin of the agency model that Apple was proposing, but they want to be able to dictate pricing and profit split.

    If they want to cut their own margin in order to compete, just like shops all over the world do, then they are free to do that. If they can negotiate a discount based on volume then that's also common practice, but wanting to bake their profit margin into the deal seems to be taking the P.

  9. wobbly1
    Flame

    amazon emailed me yesterday..

    i got this yesterday from the Kindle direct publsihing email list.

    their mail :

    Dear KDP Author,

    Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents – it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year.

    With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution – places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if “publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.” Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.

    Well… history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

    Fast forward to today, and it’s the e-book’s turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.

    Perhaps channeling Orwell’s decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn’t only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette’s readers.

    The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will “devalue books” and hurt “Arts and Letters.” They’re wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.

    Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.

    Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that’s 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

    But when a thing has been done a certain way for a long time, resisting change can be a reflexive instinct, and the powerful interests of the status quo are hard to move. It was never in George Orwell’s interest to suppress paperback books – he was wrong about that.

    And despite what some would have you believe, authors are not united on this issue. When the Authors Guild recently wrote on this, they titled their post: “Amazon-Hachette Debate Yields Diverse Opinions Among Authors” (the comments to this post are worth a read). A petition started by another group of authors and aimed at Hachette, titled “Stop Fighting Low Prices and Fair Wages,” garnered over 7,600 signatures. And there are myriad articles and posts, by authors and readers alike, supporting us in our effort to keep prices low and build a healthy reading culture. Author David Gaughran’s recent interview is another piece worth reading.

    We recognize that writers reasonably want to be left out of a dispute between large companies. Some have suggested that we “just talk.” We tried that. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store. Since then Amazon has made three separate offers to Hachette to take authors out of the middle. We first suggested that we (Amazon and Hachette) jointly make author royalties whole during the term of the dispute. Then we suggested that authors receive 100% of all sales of their titles until this dispute is resolved. Then we suggested that we would return to normal business operations if Amazon and Hachette’s normal share of revenue went to a literacy charity. But Hachette, and their parent company Lagardere, have quickly and repeatedly dismissed these offers even though e-books represent 1% of their revenues and they could easily agree to do so. They believe they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle.

    We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices. We know making books more affordable is good for book culture. We’d like your help. Please email Hachette and copy us.

    Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch: Michael.Pietsch@hbgusa.com

    Copy us at: readers-united@amazon.com

    Please consider including these points:

    - We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.

    - Lowering e-book prices will help – not hurt – the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.

    - Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon’s offers to take them out of the middle.

    - Especially if you’re an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.

    Thanks for your support.

    The Amazon Books Team

    my reply

    Thank you for trying to drag me into your commercial spat with Hachette, but no thank you . Negotiate don't propagandise.

    yours

    etc.

    if they want me to write on their behalf i want NUJ rates

  10. jai

    El Reg is Pro-Amazon sympathiser?

    How come this article completely fails to pick up on the horrific mis-quoting of George Orwell, wherein Amazon have deliberately spun his pro-paperback quote into an anti-paperback statement?

    El Reg is usually good at picking up on these things and sticking the boot in, but you've completely missed it.

    1. Al Jones

      Re: El Reg is Pro-Amazon sympathiser?

      Here's what the NYT had to say about Amazon's use of Orwell statement about paperbacks:

      When Orwell wrote that line, he was celebrating paperbacks published by Penguin, not urging suppression or collusion. Here is what the writer actually said in The New English Weekly on March 5, 1936: “The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if the other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.”

      http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/business/media/in-a-fight-with-authors-amazon-cites-orwell-but-not-quite-correctly.html

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: El Reg is Pro-Amazon sympathiser?

        If Paperbacks were sixpence in Britain and 25c in the US, that suggests an exchange rate of 10 dollars to the pound!

      2. tom dial Silver badge

        Re: El Reg is Pro-Amazon sympathiser?

        The full Orwell quote:

        "The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if the other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them. It is, of course, a great mistake to imagine that cheap books are good for the book trade. Actually it is just the other way around. If you have, for instance, five shillings to spend and the normal price of a book is half-a-crown, you are quite likely to spend your whole five shillings on two books. But if books are sixpence each you are not going to buy ten of them, because you don’t want as many as ten; your saturation-point will have been reached long before that. Probably you will buy three sixpenny books and spend the rest of your five shillings on seats at the ‘movies’. Hence the cheaper the books become, the less money is spent on books. This is an advantage from the reader’s point of view and doesn’t hurt trade as a whole, but for the publisher, the compositor, the author and the bookseller it is a disaster."

        It is clear that many digital books are worth less than paper ones in that instead of purchasing an object outright, with an unrestricted right to use and transfer it you are buying a sometimes seriously restricted license. They should be priced lower. With that limitation, Amazon's proposal clearly would benefit *book purchasers.

        Amazon claims empirical evidence that their proposal is likely to increase the revenue to publishers and authors, but they might be wrong or warping the truth for their benefit. If they are correct, though, it also could benefit publishers and authors as well.

        The publishers' argument has the appearance of an attempt to justify and continue a possibly obsolescent business model, where in the future "books" may be produced by web-mediated groups of independent authors, editors, compositors, and printers; and publishers, as coordinators of the overall process (and skimmers of some of the revenue) are consigned a much less central (and profitable) role than they now have.

        As another poster noted, nothing major stands in the way of Hachette or other publishers engaging in online sales of books on their lists in competition with Amazon, although start up costs could be significant and Amazon's market position would be a challenge. Those who did so likely would accrue a larger part of the total revenue and would be able to use part of it to improve the lot of the authors. If they so chose.

  11. Maty

    Author rates

    If amazon ever gets its wish that 35% goes to the author, this will indeed be a revolution. Many publishers offer royalties of between 4% and 12% of sales. And sales to things like book clubs can net the author less than 10p per book sold.

    The author can get some of this eased by having an agent fighting on his behalf, but then the agent takes anything from 10-15% of the author's profits as well. Writing is like acting - the few who make it big do very well, but at present most writers would make a better living flipping burgers.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As long as Amazon refuses to support ePub I won't believe any of their claims of trying to help the readers.

    Support ePub and the users will really benefit from increased competition.

    And no, being able to convert ePub to mobi doesn't count. There's no way I'd try to have my mother or other non-technical users do that for any purchases made from other ebook sellers.

  13. Stevie

    Bah!

    No e-book is worth $9.99.

    Not many e-books are worth half that. $5 is the level at which I begin to baulk, looking instead for the remaindered hardback, originally priced around $25 now going for $10 or even less.

    I wonder what the authors make of that calculus.

    I also wonder at an industry that pushes e-books optically scanned - and therefore error-laden - from originals published in the 1950s and 1960s, written by authors dead two decades and more and prices them at around $12-$15, and wonder what the living authors think of that. Who would buy such a thing?

    And I can't tell you the smell that comes to mind when an e-book costs $12 while the hardback is in print, but can be had for less than half that when the paperback is published with no changes to the e-content. Not so much as a change of typeface. Yes, George, I'm talking about your books. And no George, I didn't buy it until the price dropped to $3. I believe that's your nose lying at your feet.

    Perhaps it's time to remember that making a living by writing books is a very recent phenomenon, and that the window for that being possible may be closing owing to too many fat bastards grabbing all the pie.

    1. Arcadian

      Re: Bah!

      'making a living by writing books is a very recent phenomenon'

      It has only been possible for about three hundred years. Some might call that 'very recent'. Most would not. One of the first literary authors to make a comfortable living out of writing books was the poet Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744). It is no coincidence that the first copyright law, the Statute of Anne (1710), was passed very early in his career as a writer.

  14. Will Godfrey Silver badge

    Decent publishers are well worth their money.

    I've had one non-fiction book published (about 20 years ago). The publisher gave me an incredible amount of help and support, including introducing me to various specialists to ensure I had my facts right, and to help me with examples.

    They also gave me a lot of advice on writing style, chapter length etc.

    Although the book had a narrow target audience it sold out and had a reprint. I don't see Amazon contributing such a service.

    1. fandom

      Re: Decent publishers are well worth their money.

      Yet they do

      1. Arcadian

        Re: Decent publishers are well worth their money.

        You've missed the crucial point by several miles, I am afraid. Amazon-owned Createspace charges the authors for the services it offers. Under the traditional publishing model, the publishing company provides copy-editing and other services at its own expense, and usually makes an advance payment to the author as well.

        Under the self-publishing model, which Createspace is designed to facilitate, the authors take on themselves virtually all the expenses involved in writing and publishing the work, as well as the hassle involved in commissioning editiorial and design services, etc.

        1. fandom

          Re: Decent publishers are well worth their money.

          No, I haven't missed the point, the traditional publishers charge the authors for their services too, where do you think the publishers money comes from? The difference is they do it after the books gets published and they may lose money on it.

          But then Amazon also publish books the traditional way with advances to the authors and the like.

  15. Paul J Turner

    Replace the middleman

    Amazon should start their own publishing house and offer authors 50%. Job done!

  16. camnai

    And the people who employ sweatshop labour in Bangladesh are doing it in the interests of the wearers of shirts.

  17. Neoc

    Two sides

    While I agree that Hachette et al have been naughty in their collusion, there is another underlying problem - the "walled garden" mentality of the eBook sellers.

    With normal books I can walk into *any* bookshop, buy a book, and read it when and where I want to. In the case of eBooks and Joe Public, if I want to read an eBook from Amazon I have to read it through their Kindle device or app. Ditto with Kobo. Ditto with... you get my drift here. I cannot easily buy from one eBook supplier and read it on my chosen device or app. (Yes, I am aware that Calibre and Adobe copyright whatever-its-name-is will allow me to do this, but I am talking about Joe and Jane Public who are lucky if they can figure out where the off switch is on their computer.)

    Until you can easily (and legally) migrate your eBooks from one device to another regardless of where you bought them from, then Amazon and its ilk are hypocrits when decrying they are doing this "for the readers".

    1. phulshof

      Re: Two sides

      While I'm not happy with Amazon's DRM either, it's good to remember that it's the publishers who insist on DRM, and DRM by definition is proprietary. Each rights holder using Amazon gets to decide for itself whether its e-books are sold with or without DRM.

  18. G.Y.

    "did not collude" ?

    "Hachette did not collude with anyone" , but settled out of court with the DOJ on this issue; and apple was convicted in open court of collusing with Hachette and others.

  19. phulshof

    If you truly believe Amazon's the bad one when it comes to taking money from authors, then this blogpost should be an eye opener.

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