Amazon vs. Macmillan: FIGHT!

[annathepiper]

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.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

Comments

[technoshaman]

Nice roundup. I'm with seattlesparks, though... when you cheese off Doctorow, Stross, and Scalzi all at once? You're gonna have a baaaaaaad week.

I dunno if this will be it or not, but eventually somebody over there in the Gozer Building is gonna screw the pooch hard enough to really do some damage... which frankly can only be a good thing, because that leaves a bigger slice of the pie for folks like Drollerie to pick up when the dust settles. Sure, if you can get your product into a big-box store you *theoretically* have a shot at selling bigger. But that assumes you're selling a product with general appeal - which you, my friend, are not. Your customers are going to be used to going and looking in the back alleys of the Intertubes for the good stuff, and by asking scruffy looking characters with names like Doctorow and Scalzi what the heck the Big Idea is.

So yeah, I would encourage you to pimp your own little house, like Scalzi does with Subterranean... I think it's better all around. It's not like we're Trying to Take Over The World here... just helping out our friends.

[annathepiper]

Well, seattlesparks was herself quoting one of Scalzi's commenters, but yeah. :) As for the rest...

Sure, if you can get your product into a big-box store you *theoretically* have a shot at selling bigger.

There's no "theoretically" about it. If you're competent at all, and you have enough presence and visibility, you will sell better in print if you start selling at all. Period. The ebook market is still a very tiny fraction of the number of books that get sold.

And frankly, I'd be very, very, very happy to be part of that market. I love me some ebooks, but I'd very much prefer to be playing in the bigger pond--just because it would mean that more people would be reading my work. Ebooks won't get me there. Not yet.

But that assumes you're selling a product with general appeal - which you, my friend, are not.

Um. I realize you're trying to be complimentary here, but this isn't really something you want to say to a writer. ;) It's meaningless, really. No, I'm not writing sex-laden, dark, gritty urban fantasy/paranormal romance, but there are absolutely readers out there who don't care about that, and who are much more interested in the "general appeal" of a good story.

They don't have to scour the back alleys of the Net to do it, either. Drollerie itself may be a back alley, but Amazon isn't, and we sell there. Fictionwise isn't, and we sell there. Barnes and Noble isn't, and we do sell at least a few of our books there (although I do wish B&N would get our inventory updated, but that's another issue).

And frankly? I'd LOVE it if Drollerie and ebooks took over the world. ;)

[fabricdragon]

Amazon appears to have forgotten some rules:
writers write. many blog.
news feeds like well written sound bites
if you anger people with good sound bites who write well, you better have a statement out.... fast.

[annathepiper]

Seriously, I would have thought they'd have learned the need to issue a statement to get on top of these things during the last round of Fail!