The Internet war between bookseller Amazon and book publisher Hachette is heating up—although it is being fought through or by surrogates. How much either of the two negotiating behemoths are orchestrating the surrogates is just speculation. I suspect some of it is, but not all. So far the war isn’t dying down; if anything it’s escalating.
I won’t trouble you with a bunch of links. If you follow them then follow the links they give and one more time you’ll be blaming me for all the time you’re spending. No, I won’t be giving you links. It’s all pretty easy to see. The Passive Voice blog has a number of summarized, aggregated posts about it. Joe Konrath has a couple, as does Barry Eisler, David Gaughran, and Hugh Howey on the self-publishing side. Several on the trade publishing side have blog posts as well. I have read a few, but don’t remember the names. All of the self-publishers I mentioned have links to blogs on the other side.
I’ve said before that the gist of the war is the Amazon-Hachette negotiations. Because of non-disclosure agreements no one knows for sure what the negotiations are about, or why they are taking so long. Lots of people speak authoritatively, as if they do know, but then say they don’t. One such person is Stephen Zacharias of Kensington Publishing, who, in comments on another blog, wrote: “The negotiations stem from one side wanting more money than before and the other side not wanting to give it up…but no one knows for sure what all the negotiations entail.” So he states it as a sure thing, then says he doesn’t know. This is typical of the commentary on the negotiations.
The latest salvos are open letters. An open letter to Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon, has been written and signed by several bestselling authors, including James Patterson and John Grisham. The gist of that letter: Amazon, stop hurting authors and readers. It has around 70 signatories. A competing letter written by Howey and signed by most of the outspoken in the self-publishing world says: Hachette and other big publishers, stop hurting authors and readers. It has, at last count, a few less than 5,000 signatories.
I haven’t signed either. But I think I’ve made it clear on this blog where I stand. Amazon actually wears a few hats in the publishing world. They are a bookseller. They are a book publisher through a couple of trade publishing imprints. And they are a publisher for the huge self-publishing community through Kindle Direct Publishing. My involvement in publishing is through the latter.
Since it’s remotely possible that someone may read my blog who is considering what side “to take” in the Amazon-Hachette standoff, I offer my take on which is better for writers and readers.
- Amazon, as a bookseller, discounts aggressively and extensively. Big Publishing colluded to fix prices and prevent Amazon from discounting. Higher prices hurt consumers, i.e. readers. So Amazon wins this round.
- Amazon, as a publisher, pays higher royalties to authors. For an e-book that costs the consumer $5.00, at Amazon the author receives $3.50. At Big Publishing the author would receive $0.63. Larger earnings per book sold are better for the author, so Amazon wins this round too.
- Except, of course, Big Publishing won’t price their books as low as Amazon does. They will price it around $14, and the author would earn $1.75 per copy sold. Also of course, they will sell fewer copies at $14 than they would at $5, so they will receive less per copy and sell fewer copies. So at the higher price the author is not truly helped and the reader is hurt. I still award this round to Amazon.
- When e-readers proved successful to early adaptors and commercially viable, Amazon innovated and developed Kindle Direct Publishing. Taking no rights from the author, and charging nothing for use of the publishing platform, they made that 70% royalty possible for any author, independent or with a publisher, to use it and put their work before the public. Big Publishing waited a few years, and when they decided they needed to compete, they bought Author Solutions (well, one of them did, but the others all use it), that company that takes money from writers to profit, rather than doing so by selling books. So this round clearly goes to Amazon.
- Bookstores boycott products published by Amazon while they embrace products published by Big Publishing. This one we can’t mark off against Big Publishing, unless they are the ones convincing booksellers not to sell Amazon-published products. I suspect booksellers have enough motivation on their own. This one is a draw.
- That leaves only the book creation process itself. Big Publishing does things for each book it publishes: three different types of editing, professionally made covers, professionally designed book interiors. Some self-published books have that, either because the author hired some or all of them done or happened to have those skills. But I will admit that, on average, the average trade published book is of better quality than the average self-published book: in the writing and the production. This round goes to Big Publishing as being better for the reader, and for those writers fortunate enough to be let in the gate.
- Oops, I forgot about rights. Who’s better in terms of what rights they insist on having for the money that the author receives? This is a long subject, much too long to discuss here. I’ll summarize by saying that Amazon takes no rights while Big Publishing typically takes all rights for the life of the copyright (which is the author’s life plus 70 years). Some authors are able to negotiate more favorable terms, but most can’t. At least that’s what the best heads in the industry tell me. So obviously Amazon is better for authors on this than is big publishing.
Food for thought as you go about your book buying.
