Good News, and Amazonfail Wrapup
First the news, then the fail. Aren’t you excited?
I am pleased and proud to announce that Orbit Books will be bringing out all five Dante Valentine books in an omnibus, with an all-new cover, in March 2011. I’ve seen some roughs of the cover, which unfortunately I can’t share, but they are splendid. I am incredibly happy to be able to announce this. I have other good news, but I have to wait to share it. Which just about kills me.
And now, onto the fail!
Some of you may have heard about a second Amazonfail over the weekend. Basically, on Friday afternoon-evening, Amazon announced that it was disabling the buy buttons from all MacMillan books. (Later, unannounced, they pulled sample chapters of MacM books from the Kindle.) MacMillan is a huge publisher, and plenty of SF/F authors were affected, including one or two of the Deadline Dames, Tobias Buckell and John Scalzi.
The reason? MacMillan wanted to go to “dynamic pricing”. Which meant that when an ebook first came out, it would be priced higher ($12.99-$15.99) and the price would decrease (to $5.99) over time, analogous to a book coming out in hardcover, then cheaper in trade paperback, then even cheaper in mass market, and finally the cheapest of all in remainder. Amazon threw a gigantic tantrum over this, wanting to sell ebooks for $9.99, world without end, amen.
MacMillan released a statement, Amazon dragged their feet and finally on Sunday released (on the Kindle forum on their website, of all places) a self-serving piece of tripe meant to portray themselves as the underdog looking out for consumers instead of a corporation caught trying to strongarm market share.
There are a couple of things I want to say about this debacle. But first, the links!
* The original breaking story in NYT and VentureBeat.
* MacMillan’s statement.
* Amazon’s statement.
* Laura Anne Gilman’s take on Amazon’s statement.
* Tobias Buckell’s very good breakdown of ebook pricing. Even if you read NOTHING else on the debacle, read this–because it addresses one of the nastiest misconceptions of the whole thing–namely, that ebooks are free to manufacture.
* John Scalzi on how Amazon humped the bunk and on ebook pricing.
The things I want to say:
1. This is not new behavior. Amazon has a habit of delisting or trying to strongarm publishers on Friday evenings. Remember when they wanted to eff over small publishers? Remember when they went through and delisted and deranked LBGT titles? Once is chance, twice coincidence, three times means it’s a policy, a pattern. I am no longer willing to give Amazon the benefit of any doubt.
2. Ebooks are not free to produce, dammit. As Tobias Buckell points out, ebooks are not cheaper for publishers to produce than paper books. That’s because publishers are providing quality control. Self-published ebooks are not free to produce either; the cost is borne by the buyer more directly without quality control; vanity press ebooks are paid for by the author. THIS SHIT IS NOT FREE. The biggest misconception I’ve seen in this debate is “ebooks are free, MacMillan is trying to gouge the reader!” NO, GODDAMMIT. Ebooks need to be edited and converted into ebook format, as well as marketed and invested in to be made available. Don’t bring up the music industry, because a book is not a pop song. Don’t bring up Baen or Cory Doctorow either, they make their money in other ways. I wish I could tell all the sanctimonious bastards badmouthing MacM to “QUIT USING THIS AS A RED HERRING. Go read Buckell’s explanation again.” If there’s anything that makes my blood pressure spike in this whole thing, this is it.
3. Amazon is not the little guy here. Amazon is not looking out for reader interest. Amazon got caught being an asshole.
4. I do not agree with Buckell and Scalzi about DRM. In my mind, DRM is the only faint and fading protection authors have against book pirates, and throwing out DRM instead of concentrating on how to build it better and more efficient and so it doesn’t enrage the consumer is throwing Baby out with bathwater. This is not a popular view, but it is mine and I will not have the comments section be dragged down into telling me how I’m WRONG and BAD for having it. You’ve been warned.
5. I still have Amazon links on my site, as a courtesy to my readers. If you want to buy my books through Amazon (always assuming they don’t delist me for some goddamn reason or another), who am I to complain? But I do list Barnes & Noble, Borders, Indiebound, Powell’s, and (upcoming links) Book Depository first. If it so moves you to buy through them, or through anyone else, first, then more power to you.
That about covers it. Play nice in comments, feel free to post links to other rundowns of the whole thing. I’m exhausted and still nursing a cold, so off I go to drink some tea and get some revisions done. And let my blood pressure come down. Otherwise I might bust a gasket, and who will write these books then?
Related posts:
- I’m Not The Jerk In E-book Pricing, And Trunk Novels
- Disappointment
- Publishing And Misplaced Punishment
Tags: money money, Oh Holy No..., shooting from the hip, we are not amused
February 1st, 2010 at 10:57 am
I think I’m with you on as far as no longer giving Amazon the benefit of any doubt. I’ve heard too many things like this for me to continue being comfortable with them as a vendor… especially when there *are* other options out there.
Thanks for the links — it’s always good to get a varied view on any subject. Here’s hoping you manage to decompress without exploding. I still want to know what the rest of that good news you’re dying to tell us is, and if you go boom… well, I won’t get that news, now will I?
February 1st, 2010 at 12:15 pm
This is part response, part rant…
Let me preface my comment by stating that I have been reading ebooks (from ereader.com and fictionwise.com) since early 2001. By reading, I mean hundreds of ebooks versus a handful of print books.
At first books were $3-$7. I bought books more frequently and kept up on my favorite authors. At some point a “flexible” pricing scheme was implemented where books were sold at hardcover prices for about a year before they dropped down to paperback prices, the same way that MacMillan is talking. I would put the new releases on my wishlist and then wait a year before purchasing them. The reason? Penny-pinching? A little. But mostly because there is no additional value to buying these books right away. In the print world, there is a huge difference between a hardcover book and a paperback. In the ebook world that $12-$20 ebook is *exactly* the same as the $7 version a year later. Unlike a used car, I still get the same mileage out of the $7 version.
I still have some of my favorite authors that I keep up on, even though I wait a year before buying their books. But I have found a number of new authors whose prices do not start out high. (Lilith – you are one of the great new authors I discovered this way
My opinion is a bit divided on Amazon. I get the frustration at them playing god with their power. But, as a consumer, I feel that $10 or less is an acceptable price for good fiction.
February 1st, 2010 at 12:35 pm
Erik, did you read Tobias’s article?
February 1st, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Ok, so I just bought the last three ( already had first two) of the Dante Valentine books this weekend to read while stuck in my house during a snow/ice storm. Love them! I am excited to see the new cover on the omnibus version and will be buying it so I can carry all of them when I travel instead of trying figure out which one I like best, impossible…
On Amazon, I don’t have an ebook reader, I read them on my computer when I get them and I think that writing is hard enough without Amazon once again trying to be the Big Bad out there. I have been trying to stick with independent bookstores but sometimes find it is hard to find obscure or older books at those locations. I’m still upset with Amazon for delisting almost all of my favorite authors. It is unfortunate that Amazon continues to pull these stunts.
February 1st, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I did read Tobias’s article before I posted (hence the reference to the used car analogy; one can never have too many car analogies.)
I am neither a published author nor in the publishing business, so perhaps my ignorance is showing (and feel free to correct me if that is the case.) My understanding, enhanced by the article, is that the upfront costs for both print and electronic publishing are very similar up to the point of production. With print there are ongoing costs for printing, distribution, and unsold stock. With ebooks the ongoing costs are in storage and bandwidth, which the distributor takes on (as an aside – I’ve always wondered what the bandwidth costs are for large-scale sites like fictionwise, mobipocket, or amazon.) Of course, the biggest difference seems to be in volume of sales. As Tobias mentions, the difference in scale is so large that recovering the initial cost producing an ebook is far more unpredictable than it is for print. I am sure that it will remain unpredictable until the scale tips the other way.
My personal buying habits (and I understand that this is purely anecdotal) tend toward buying more less expensive books and fewer expensive ones, which is why I feel that books sold for $10 or less will be more profitable in the long run.
Please don’t mistake my meaning. I don’t buy “cheaper” books. I buy less expensive ones. Due to the breadth of material out there I don’t need to sacrifice quality for quantity.
Of course, The ebook market is relatively young and only recently entered the public consciousness, so I imagine that a lot of these discussions will be meaningless in 10-20 years.
I just wanted to bring my opinion as a long-time consumer into this topic.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:33 pm
I went to Borders (Bridgeport) last night and picked up the new anthology, A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters with your short story in it last night.
You are right, L Vampires!
The fun part of bookstores vs electronic/online books is that I did read the short story before I bought the book.
February 1st, 2010 at 2:40 pm
>>Once is chance, twice coincidence, three times means it’s a policy, a pattern. I am no longer willing to give Amazon the benefit of any doubt.<<
It is a pattern of abuse and it's why I'm also not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. They want to be the dictators of what the public reads and NO ONE should be given that kind of power.
February 1st, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Interesting.
Since I know so little about the publishing industry and E books (I read the old fashioned way), this has been a small education.
Amazon doesn’t come out well at all in this, even assuming that it was on the right side of things (in business disputes there rarely is a right side).
I can understand (mostly from the Tobias Buckell article) that McMillan wants to set it pricing system so as to both have profits in general and enable them to move more deeply into the E book market profitably. I do wonder if, even though the present sales of E Books are sufficiently low to warrant hiking the price, such an action may not contribute to delaying the interest of people to buy books in that format; Lower initial pricing may attract more customers and help in further developing the technology.
From that point of view, Amazon’s wish to keep the price down makes sense. However, its behavior doesn’t indicate that this is the goal at all. It seems more that Amazon wishes to control pricing (and thus customer access) from the retailer end of the business. That is a silly move and thus doesn’t appear to be a correct explanation.
It would appear to me that a whole lot of this is essentially about the means (and control of those means) of reading E Books than it is about the actual pricing system of any books.
I know next to nothing about the electronic means to read and obtain books thus do not know whether Kindle or any other system is trying, or even can, set itself as the “new” microsoft (i.e. set the standard and gain near monopoly) in its field. Yet it would seem Amazon is aiming for exactly that sort of outcome.
Again, I know so little about the industry that my opinion is most likely worth less than what you paid for it.
Could someone explain or put forward a link explaining, how the new IPad figures in all this, as it is mentioned many times in the articles that try to analyze this mess?
February 1st, 2010 at 5:43 pm
[...] curious, Lilith Saint Crow has a lot of information and links on her post entitled, “Good News and Amazonfail Wrap-Up.” I do, however, want to talk about something related to [...]
February 1st, 2010 at 9:10 pm
[...] exciting news for Lilith Saintcrow fans. It was announced today that Orbit has bought all five of the Dante Valentine novels and will be releasing them as an [...]
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:22 am
Saintcrow, u keep righting, I’ll keep buying… pretty awesome stuph u write!
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:25 am
err… writing, yeah, that’s what I meant, “keep writing’! LOL
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:30 am
@Terry – here is a link to a short article on how Apple fits into this: http://gizmodo.com/5460203/the-apple+amazon-ebook-war-begins-amazon-deletes-macmillan-books
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:32 am
[...] I am going to briefly touch on the Amazon/MacMillan blow-up from this weekend. (For details, see Lilith Saintcrow’s blog. She gives her opinion as well as a nice set of informative links. More info can be found on Nathan [...]
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:37 am
Gratz on the omnibus! I’ll have to look into it; I’ve wanted to check out the series but have drug my feet since it’s a series and already all out. Excited for the more good news because it surely deals with books.
Agree w/ all points about Amazonfail – and it’s not like Amazon US is the only division, I’ve heard AmazonUK tried this with Animal Farm, of all books.
Interesting point bringing up the DRM argument – I agree with YOU. As my husband puts it, DRM is to keep the honest people honest and the lazy people lazy. It’s not like the music industry where CD’s were DRM free, so you could argue that eversions ought to be. A book cannot be shared simultaneously like a CD, there’s no precedent for going DRM-free. It’d be suicide.
February 2nd, 2010 at 8:46 am
Thanks Erik
That was interesting and adds to the story.
I wonder if I should call my broker
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:07 am
More on this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/108723/e-book-pricing-put-into-turmoil
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
The opponents to DRM are very vocal, and I’d be interested in hearing views from the other side of the fence, as it were.
I don’t want to start anything in the comments, and I’m not lining up my guns to take you down. I’m a consumer, primarily, and it’s a topic I find interesting.
Perhaps this is in your blog archives somewhere and I’ve not seen it? If not, I would find it interesting to hear a fully reasoned response to those who think that DRM is the next spawn of pick-your-devil.
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:42 pm
I agree with Tobias – I prefer to go without DRM, but I will go along with it if it isn’t too restrictive.
For example, I use eReader. Secure eReader books have to be unlocked with the credit card number that was used to purchase the book (something people are unlikely to share). There is no restriction on the number of devices I can use. I have gone through at least 6 hardware devices (handspring, 3-4 palms, ipod touch, and now a blackberry storm) and I haven’t had to mess with activating or deactivating those devices. If the device is functional when I finish with it (not always a given), I just delete the old content before passing it on. That is what I consider reasonable DRM protection.
The Kindle is too restrictive for my tastes. Hardware choices are limited and I have to worry about the number of devices I have activated. I also have to worry about Amazon yanking a title from the device.
I am an honest person who agrees that artists and authors deserve to get paid for their work, so I have no interest in stealing or sharing what I buy. I find it immensely frustrating when my responsible behavior is rewarded by being forced to jump through too many hoops, and I make my purchases accordingly. This is why I buy online music from eMusic and Amazon rather than iTunes, and why I buy ebooks from fictionwise and ereader but not mobipocket or amazon.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:38 pm
I’ve been spending far too much time in the last few days arguing with other people on ebook sites such as Mobileread and trying to get across the idea that the way Amazon is handling the dispute makes them the bad guy.
Most of them are not willing to understand either that Amazon is doing the bullying or that ebooks are not free to create.
I won’t go into DRM, save to say I’m more on Scalzi and Buckell’s side than yours.
February 4th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
I purchased a Nook from Barnes and Noble, and I can definitely see the difference between publishers who spend the time to correctly format the book for the ereader and those who don’t.
I’m someone who has always purchased Hardbacks for those authors that I really like. So, I have no objections to paying more for a new release ebook up front (it’s still cheaper than the paper version), than I’d pay for one later, or about the time it would hit paperback.
The author has worked very hard to produce a product that I enjoy and that takes me to another world, and deserves my thanks, gratitude, and money for giving me that enjoyment!
Amazon has definitely turned into a big corporate bully flexing its muscles to force anyone that does business with it to conform to its rules, or else it’s just not going to let you play on its playground. Walmart has done something similar. Smaller manufacturers can’t get Walmart to carry it’s products because they can’t afford to jump through Walmart’s hoops and meet their requirements they force on their suppliers.
So, I say avoid the bullies and play with the nice kids down the block!