Amazon: Business As Usual?

[AnemicOak]

Yesterday the NYPL hosted a live discussion on Amazon and the future of publishing.

In April 2014, Amazon and Hachette locked horns in what has become a very public, and still ongoing, battle over contract negotiations. After the online retailer removed the pre-order option, imposed shipping delays, and slashed discounts on the book publisher's titles, the reaction against Amazon was swift and fierce. But the story of the Amazon-Hachette dispute is anything but simple, and raises critical questions about the future of the book publishing industry. What is really at stake for the companies, authors and readers? What larger issues of free-market capitalism and free speech are at play? And what does the Amazon-Hachette dispute reveal about the future of the publishing industry in the age of e-books?

Authors, agents, and publishers take to the LIVE from the NYPL stage to tackle these urgent questions in a conversation moderated by Tina Bennett, literary agent at WME. Guests include: best-selling author James Patterson; Morgan Entrekin, publisher and president of Grove Atlantic; Bob Kohn, attorney and founder of EMusic.com; Tim Wu, law professor and theorist of “net neutrality;” Danielle Allen, political theorist, author of a new book on the Declaration of Independence and elected chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board; and David Vandagriff, intellectual property lawyer.

I don't have time to watch it right now, but from the comments on the video stream page it looks like more of the usual stuff. Anyway, thought I'd pass along the link for anyone interested in it...

http://new.livestream.com/theNYPL/businessasusual


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[fjtorres]

Post-mortem from Mr Vandagriff:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/20...ferent-worlds/

He doesn't get into he-saids/she-saids--the discussion speaks for itself--but rather his impressions of what was going on and why.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Post-mortem from Mr Vandagriff:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/07/20...ferent-worlds/

He doesn't get into he-saids/she-saids--the discussion speaks for itself--but rather his impressions of what was going on and why.

Thanks for the link. Very informative. You know, I never did see the rest of the discussion. I quit after Tina made that ridiculous statement during her opening comments. I haven't yet mustered up the courage to finish watching it.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Thanks for the link. Very informative. You know, I never did see the rest of the discussion. I quit after Tina made that ridiculous statement during her opening comments. I haven't yet mustered up the courage to finish watching it.

You didn't miss much.
Just the usual variations on "Amazon is destroying literature", "tradpub is indispensable", and "the government should protect us".
Nary a mention of readers or authors.

They really do reside on a different world; one cube-shaped.

[sirmaru]

The best outcome: all authors publish only on Amazon and end up with a bigger take than from their old publishers. Then they do better and the consumers get lower price books.

The old publishers are an ancient custom. No one really needs them or the old buggy and horse shoe manufacturers.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

The best outcome: all authors publish only on Amazon and end up with a bigger take than from their old publishers. Then they do better and the consumers get lower price books.

If this were to ever happen (it won't) the authors cut wouldn't be what it is now, you can bet Amazon would take more.

The old publishers are an ancient custom. No one really needs them or the old buggy and horse shoe manufacturers.

They definitely have their issues, but so does self-publishing. There is room for both in the market.

[ottdmk]

This is not a best option for me. Already, because I don't want to deal with Amazon's walled-garden there are authors whose works I cannot buy in e-book format. I shouldn't have to use anti-drm tools just to buy particular authors.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

If this were to ever happen (it won't) the authors cut wouldn't be what it is now, you can bet Amazon would take more.


They definitely have there issues, but so does self-publishing. There is room for both in the market.

Yep. Given that Amazon likes to squeeze the suppliers, you can bet that the individual self publishers would get squeezed big time.

The elephant in the room is that most readers don't want to read through the slush pile. They want books of a known quality. That is basically what publishers bring to the table, from a consumer's point of view.

[sirmaru]

I have NEVER selected a book to read based on its publisher. I've been reading books since the early 1930's and do not even remember ever even knowing the names of the publishers of any books I have read.

Today the only function I, as a consumer, see for publishers is to keep prices high so they can get their cut which serves no purpose for me.

From the consumer viewpoint the only factors in book selection today is the subject, the author and Amazon.

What may happen is that some other company will compete with Amazon and then there will be two sources for books. Maybe that new company will even be better than Amazon.

Its possible that some publishers will set up an Amazon like site and take on products other than books. That IS their future if they are smart.

Even with print books only the printer was required. The publishers were the distributors which function has now been absorbed by Amazon. The local retail outlets are also probably going to go the way of the dinosaurs since eBooks don't need them.

In 10 years print books will be gone as well. Print books will be ancient artifacts as are scroll books today. There will be many forms of eBooks and that is what will spread. Google already has electronic eye glasses where one could read an eBook while being stuck in traffic. Google is already getting self driving cars ready where no human driver will be required. Thus, an eBook will probably be available to read in the dashboard for front seat passengers and another dash in the rear for those passengers.

Book reviews are what readers look at when selecting books. The NY Times is a good source and browsing the Book of the Month Club (should probably have links to Amazon pages for purchases) site is also a good way to find them. Authors come on TV and radio programs all the time to sell their books. At the Amazon site purchasers and other readers of books post their reviews as well.

It used to take hours to manually walk through a local book store to see what was available. One can search the Amazon site in minutes to come up with choices by a wide variety of criteria.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

The best outcome: all authors publish only on Amazon and end up with a bigger take than from their old publishers. Then they do better and the consumers get lower price books.

The old publishers are an ancient custom. No one really needs them or the old buggy and horse shoe manufacturers.

Not good for authors, readers, or Amazon.
(Look to Microsoft for a precedent.)

Not going go happen, either.
Worst case scenario would be an 80/20 market split between Amazon and Apple, which is plenty bad anyway.

[FacebookVirus]

Print books won't be gone in 10 years.

CDs didn't kill vinyl; VCRs didn't kill movie theaters; TV didn't kill radio - but all of these predictions were widespread at one time or another.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by FacebookVirus

Print books won't be gone in 10 years.

CDs didn't kill vinyl; VCRs didn't kill movie theaters; TV didn't kill radio - but all of these predictions were widespread at one time or another.

Depends what you mean with "kill". I would consider vinyl not a mass market. It survives, but it isn't very big. And we now have mp3s and spotify too. Who even speaks of CDs? And your examples aren't that great in regard to books. I would consider tv, movies and radio as different mediums. You are right of course, that print books won't be gone in 10 years. Your vinyl example is in my opinion the best in regard to books. Like with vinyl there will be a market for print books in the future. But in essence a book is a book. There are just words. Nothing essential is lost, if you read it digital or on paper. So I don't think ebooks are going away and I expect them to become the preferred format some time in the future. But we are just at the beginning. Print books will be there for a long time.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by FacebookVirus

Print books won't be gone in 10 years.

CDs didn't kill vinyl; VCRs didn't kill movie theaters; TV didn't kill radio - but all of these predictions were widespread at one time or another.

So far as I know, no one sells 78 RPM Vinyl anymore. I don't buy CD's anymore but just buy my songs as mp3 files from Amazon. I don't think anyone sells video tape anymore since DVD's are sooooooo much better especially if one rents them from Netflix.

My old TV's, which got 8 stations over the air using cathode ray tubes, are gone forever. My present LCD TV's get hundreds of stations from Cable.

Today's high definition, color movies make the old black and white movies seem to be primitive hobbyist productions. Most can be watched on Netflix within a few months of their introductions in theaters. Thus, I haven't been to a theater since Netflix appeared. Finally, ordinary people with cell phones can take videos of superb quality making the professional black and white films of the past really amateurish.

I used to be able to get a few radio stations over the air on my old radios. Today my internet radios get thousands of stations from radio internet sites all over the planet. My old car radios were lucky to get a few stations over the air. My present car radio gets hundreds of stations from all over the world using Satellites.

So far as I know no one buys books on handwritten scrolls anymore.

Prior to 25 years ago eBooks were not even the subject of science fiction. Not even the old "Twilight Zone" scifi series of the early 60's even mentioned that concept.

NOTHING has stayed the same. So I still think eBooks will replace pBooks for 98% of readers in 10 years. They are more easily distributed, have a variety of fonts for every reader and can be read on all sorts of devices from PC's to Tablets to eInk Readers to cell phones to the new Google Wearables.

Print books, the same as scroll books, will always be of interest to scholars and places of learning. However, for the mass of retail book readers eBooks and even more advanced ways of transferring collections of words will be the way to go.

Finally, the old print books required good vision near 20/20 or glasses to correct to that level to read those books since the fonts were fixed. Today folks with very poor vision can select proper fonts and never need glasses at all to correct vision to read. That factor alone makes print books totally OBSOLETE in addition to making custom reading glasses also totally unnecessary for most people.

[WillAdams]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

The best outcome: all authors publish only on Amazon and end up with a bigger take than from their old publishers. Then they do better and the consumers get lower price books.

The old publishers are an ancient custom. No one really needs them or the old buggy and horse shoe manufacturers.

Yeah, because Amazon does such an amazingly good job of:

- selecting books which are worthy of publication
- editing books so that they have a consistent style / voice
- fact-checking
- clearing copyrights and usages
- designing beautiful text pages
- typesetting beautiful text pages
- re-drawing images so that they represent what the author actually wanted
- hiring illustrators and photographers to make nice covers

Please, I don't see how anyone could describe a descent to all things being self-published as desirable in any way, shape, manner or form.

[marcsec]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

Yeah, because Amazon does such an amazingly good job of:
--fab list!!---

As an Indie author I would like to say a resounding 'hear hear' to this list. I think that traditional publishing does offer a valuable gatekeeping service, but even that is not foolproof. IMHO, what people want remains one word: QUALITY. That's the indispensable ingredient. To me, the customer is king and their dollar matters to me, whether that is one dollar or 20 - or even a free book, for that matter, because I'm not in the business of wasting people's time, which is also valuable.

I'm intrigued, however - does anyone know what market share Indies are taking in the marketplace for books? Does anyone track this? Obviously the playing field is changing, but by how much and how quickly?