I spent most of this weekend at the filk convention Conflikt, and that was great fun, but even as a bunch of geeky music was going on I kept an eye on the kerfuffle that exploded between Amazon and Macmillan. The issue at hand appears to be the pricing of ebooks, and as an ebook author, this is of course Relevant to My Interests.
The issue as I understand it is that Amazon and Macmillan are having a huge dispute about how much ebooks ought to cost. Macmillan is aiming for a variable pricing structure from $14.99 down to as low as $5.99, whereas Amazon is standing adamant about $9.99 as a price point. (Side note: since a lot of the ebooks I buy tend to run lower than even $9.99, even when purchased on Amazon, the nuances of the ebook pricing structure are still a mystery to me. But I digress.) They couldn’t reach an agreement, and so Amazon up and pulled all Macmillan titles out of its database, not only the ebooks, but the print titles as well.
To wit, whoa.
Amazon has since capitulated but as of this morning, Macmillan authors are still reporting that new copies of their works are still not available for purchase on Amazon. And the agents I’m seeing chime in on the matter are pretty sure this isn’t over yet by a long shot. I’m still thinking hard about what I want to do about this, if anything. I’ve seen a lot of people asserting that this has been the last straw for them, and that they will cease doing any further business with Amazon; I’ve seen several authors now go and pull all links to Amazon’s pages for their works off their sites.
It’s just one great big mess, and I’m hoping it’ll settle itself out soon. ‘Cause again, Relevant to My Interests. Drollerie is tiny enough that I can’t exactly tell people not to buy Faerie Blood or Defiance on Amazon, if that’s where they want to buy it–especially given that neither of these titles have shown up on Barnes and Noble’s site yet, and Fictionwise doesn’t have Defiance, either. But man, it’s making me inclined more and more just to point folks directly at Drollerie’s own store. Where we don’t have any DRM anyway!
Link roundup, for those of you who want to see more on the matter:
- Agent Nathan Bransford has a good summation here
- John Scalzi is less than pleased
- Tobias Buckell goes into the differences between what print books cost and what ebooks cost, which is good reading if you want a handle on why ebooks might not necessarily be as cheap as you think they should be
- Charles Stross is also less than pleased, but attempts to provide an outsider’s guide to the fight
- And agent Kristin Nelson does a quick overview of what exactly Amazon and Macmillan have themselves said on the matter
- ETA: Agent Jennifer Jackson chimes in with her own link roundup and reactions
- ETA: And a kerfuffle of this magnitude just wouldn’t be complete without a word (or many!) from Fandom Wank!
- ETA: Scott Westerfeld has a good summation, and I think that by and large I agree with his analysis
- ETA: An interesting counterargument suggests that even if Amazon is the one who had to capitulate here, they’re still going to win this fight
Again, whoa. This is me over here in the corner, munching popcorn and waiting to see how this all plays out.
Comments
4 responses to “Amazon vs. Macmillan: FIGHT!”
*hears the Mortal Kombat theme jamming in the background*
FINISH HIM!
Quite. Though really, I’d like this to be more of a meringue-y crumpet situation than mortal combat; ebooks would go well with crumpets!
Dude. You can totally FATALITY someone while sipping a lovely cup of Earl Grey and gnoshing on a biscuit.
Just don’t spill the tea. That’d be a downright shame.
Part of me would have enjoyed seeing Macmillan and the other Big 5 publishing houses banished from Amazon for long than a day and a half. The need to learn some humility that they don’t control everything and this made for a great teaching moment. We have a better chance of having our books discovered when there is less of a crowd present from those other publishers.
Alternatively, maybe Amazon will do a savvy marketing move and actively promote all Kindle books below $10 to buyers, which would include and benefit all of my publisher’s, and likely yours, titles.
The problem with the $14.99 book is that a buyer may only buy that book, instead of buying 2 titles otherwise, and we are more likely to be that second title that remains un-bought than the first one. The big publishers believe that people want to pay more for immediate access to big name authors with blockbuster releases, and “allege” that eBooks costs will come down over time in the same way other book costs do. Of course they fail to factor in that an eBook reader has already spent substantial money upfront to purchase their reader in the belief that they’ll save money and have additional convenience along the way from that purchase. I thing Macmillan sees eBook readers as people who have already demonstrated that they have lots of disposable income to spend.
I’m suspicious of the argument that eBook prices will decline at a reasonable rate and will wait to see it demonstrated in the real world. Regular book prices diminish when physical inventory has to be cleared out to get whatever residual value it still has from people not willing to buy at the current price point. It requires costs up front to print and continuing costs to store.
eBooks don’t face this barrier. Storage and publication costs are zero. With
new readers continually coming into the market and no inventory costs to speak of eBook-wise, why not just keep the costs high always and if you want this book on your shiny new eBook reader you’ll have to pay what the publisher demands?
Because I don’t need insanely high list prices for my books in order to see a tiny percentage in royalty return like authors selling through these large
publishing houses, I’m more on Amazon’s side here as a reader.
In fact, after my generally excellent eXcessica experiences, I fear that I’d
feel rather ripped off by a standard publishing contract any longer — unless I got all my money up front as an advance.
Just my $/50 on this.
–DB_Story