against The Amazon. The question is, do you really have a stake in this battle? Are we all really better off with Hachette and authors winning?
Hachette’s supporters include the media, media personalities (Steven Colbert) and journalist. These are all people who have written books, or hopes to write books. These people influence the conversations we have, and they want you to on their side against The Amazon.
As consumers, you should rebuff these media hypocrites and self-interested parasites. Amazon has been a tremendous boon to the consumer.
Is there abstract justice on their side? Lots of things would be a boon to me, and would also be completely immoral. Pirating music via file sharing would have been a great boon: free music. Cool.
Is Amazon actually treating creators unfairly? The claims that they are are at least somewhat convincing at this point.
(How do you know that “I, the reader, the consumer” might not also be an author?)
It’s not so much being on Amazon’s side or Hachette’s side, but being on the authors’ side. They’re the ones getting royally fucked over*. It’s also troubling that Amazon - the seller/retailer - wants to set the prices consumers pay.
So for me personally, it’s more that I’m not pro-Hachette so much as anti-Amazon.
Remember that the vast majority of authors aren’t making piles of money from their books.
I’m not quite sure where I stand on this issue. I’m generally anti-monopoly and anti-giant conglomerate. However, this seems to be a fight between two giant conglomerates who would each like to hold an effective monopoly. I’m extremely sympathetic to the argument that the traditional publishing model enables the profits from more popular books to subsidize publication of more niche literary and academic works. However, that model does mean that large publishers have a lot of control over authors. I like the idea that maybe authors, in a digital age, can get more control over the publication of their works, but I have a healthy respect for what good editors bring to the table, and I worry that direct publishing by authors will drown the role of editing in a giant stream of sewage.
I’m also the fond owner of a Kindle, and I hate the idea that (1) I may no longer be able to read some of my favorite authors on this device and (2) one company can control what I’m able to read on it. I’ll be waiting to see how this all shakes out before I decide what kind of e-reader I’ll be buying next.
I’m a Kindle owner, and love it… I’d be outraged if Amazon suddenly went all “Apple” on us, and refused to allow the device to display content they haven’t licensed.
At present, I can display any .txt file. At present, I can use free software like Mobipocket to convert a Word .doc into a .prc file, which the Kindle will display. And it’ll display .pdf files, although there are some issues. (It tends to crop the margins.)
At this point in time, I have a lot of independence in what I want on my Kindle. If Amazon tries to take that away, they’ll lose a lot of customers.
All I can say is that since the physical, actual store bookstores closed in my area, Amazon is a good way to get books. If there are other ways to get books, I’m all ears.
It would be a disaster for readers if Amazon wins.
Fewer and fewer books will be published, since it will be harder for publishers to break even. Things like literary fiction and genre fiction will begin to die; they never made a lot of money and now they’ll make less. The quality of a work will be less important as what sort of bizarre publicity stunts can be done to make it work. Things would be more homogeneous, since publishers don’t want to risk anything that’s any different from anything else.
You’d only be able to find new authors by wading through the morass of self-publishing. Authors will get paid less, which means they will have to work at other jobs, which means they’ll produce fewer books.
Ultimately, good books will be harder to find, more crap will flood the market, everything would be a variation on other books, entire genres (science fiction and mystery) will die out, and no one other than Amazon would survive.
Yes, you may save a few bucks. Enjoy reading the equivalent of Twilight clones for the rest of your life.
Sounds like chicken little sky is falling stuff to me. Was it a disaster for published books when Amazon started selling hardcovers and paperbacks for cheap prices, sometimes even lower than what they paid the publisher for them? So why would the same thing in ebooks be so horrid?
Yeah! Didn’t we learn our lesson with the rise of digital music and piracy? They warned us that easy digital copies would kill the sales of CDs, and they were right. Now creativity in music is at an all time low, and there’s literally no way at all to discover new music you might like.
And don’t get me started on video games! Steam started massively discounting video games and making them easy for consumers to access, and now NOBODY is making games anymore. Why would they? The video game industry is now turning into the cell phone game industry, where games are often–get this–free and the market has all but dried up. Zero selection, there, too.
There’s certainly a point at which Amazon’s demands for price reductions from publishers would force publishers to go out of business. I don’t think either Amazon or Hachette wants to reach that point, and now they’re just debating over where that point is. It’s not a case of Amazon vs. the world, as far as I can tell.
Certainly, no book publisher has a right to have Amazon sell or promote their books.
If Amazon and Hachette can’t come to an agreement, then people who want to read those books can buy them elsewhere. There are dozens of websites listed on Hachette’s “where to buy this book” page.
Strategically, I think Amazon has more to lose than Hachette here. Amazon has made a name for itself by being the place to go for books (and, now, pretty much anything that can fit in a cardboard box or the intertubes). If Amazon sells it, that’s probably where I buy it. But if I want to buy one of those Hachette books while they’re feuding, I’m going to go find it. And maybe find a web store I like more.
Has that changed, then? It was big news not so very long ago that Apple wouldn’t permit installation of software without their approval. If they’ve loosened up – great!