Ebooks aren't sold in a vacuum. Cheap ebooks affect the sale of hard covers, which affects independent book stores, which affects the employees of those bookstores. Amazon isn't doing this for the benefit of the consumer. It's doing it to drive those physical book stores out of business.
While I'm. It a fan at all of amazon I am trying to put blond and music side by side. And I get the impression that while in the music industry the publishers are the bad guys they are seen more positive with books. And consequently the "digital revolution" is good for music. And bad for books. Why is this so?
Hmmm, "thanks for your comment", but my comment never shows up..... Perhaps I failed to be politically correct or perhaps links to other sites aren't welcome....
"Nearly 1000" should more accurately be "slightly more than 900". Count was at 908 a day or two ago.
Article fails to mention counter letter/petition, pro-Amazon anti-Hachette, with more than 8000 signatures. Is on change dot org. Do a search on hugh howey and change dot org to find it (since links may be why my comments here aren't appearing).
For alternate perspectives on all this, look a site ThePassiveVoice and another site AuthorEarnings.
Does Amazon pay authors in advance, giving them the financial freedom to focus on their writing?
Glad that you asked. Yes they do!
Vincent Zandri hails from the future. He is a novelist from the day after tomorrow, when Amazon has remade the worlds of writing, printing, selling and reading books so thoroughly that there is hardly anything left besides Amazon.
Mr. Zandri, an author of mystery and suspense tales, is published by Thomas & Mercer, one of Amazon Publishing’s many book imprints. He is edited by Amazon editors and promoted by Amazon publicists to Amazon customers, nearly all of whom read his books in electronic form on Amazon’s e-readers, Amazon’s tablets and, soon, Amazon’s phones.
A few years ago he was reduced to returning bottles and cans for grocery money. Now his Amazon earnings pay for lengthy stays in Italy and Paris, as well as expeditions to the real Amazon. “I go wherever I want, do whatever I want and live however I want,” he said recently at a bar in Mill Valley, Calif., a San Francisco suburb where he was relaxing after a jaunt to Nepal.
Mr. Zandri, who 15 years ago had a $235,000 contract with a big New York house that went sour, has an answer. “Everything Amazon has promised me, it has fulfilled — and more,” he said. “They ask: ‘Are you happy, Vince? We just want to see you writing books.’ That’s the major difference between corporate-driven Big Five publishers, where the writer is not the most important ingredient in the soup, and Amazon Publishing, which places its writers on a pedestal.
Three weeks ago, just before he went to Nepal, Vincent Zandri signed a contract with Amazon for a new novel, “Everything Burns.” His $30,000 advance was immediately deposited in his bank account.By this point, he said, he is earning about what a junior lawyer makes at a big firm. Call it a comfortable six figures annually.
“It’s traditional publishing, but better, with a higher royalty rate,” he said. “I’m published by Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon India. Soon, Amazon Mars.” The company sent him a free Kindle, and now he gets most of his books from Amazon. Most of the movies he watches come from the site as well. “Amazon touches every bit of my life,” he said.
Mr. Zandri is so embedded in Amazon that he recently started wondering about it.
Two years ago, he wrote about publishers on his blog: “I know I’m supposed to cry for these people, but they had a chance to survive and in fact thrive in today’s digital book publishing world, but they haven’t. And now they are going the way of the eight-track. Bon voyage.”
Ebooks aren't sold in a vacuum. Cheap ebooks affect the sale of hard covers, which affects independent book stores, which affects the employees of those bookstores. Amazon isn't doing this for the benefit of the consumer. It's doing it to drive those physical book stores out of business.
Funny I don't hear you complaining about iTunes when they helped put record and video stores out of business. Apple is even in the ebook publishing business. Competing against the very group they colluded with. That is Antitrust.
Your ADD getting to you? This was in my previous post.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores."
"What you don’t often hear is that small independent bookstores have seen three straight years of steady growth. This is something we celebrate."
While I'm. It a fan at all of amazon I am trying to put blond and music side by side. And I get the impression that while in the music industry the publishers are the bad guys they are seen more positive with books.
And consequently the "digital revolution" is good for music. And bad for books. Why is this so?
Because they're myopic Apple Fanbois easily fooled by the Reality Distortion Field.
It's ok for Apple to put record and video stores out of business but not ok for Amazon to do the same thing to publishers.
For those who don't have an iPad (and are using a kindle eBook reader), get one (iPad)...
Consider what would happen if Barnes and Noble had to shutter their retail stores?
Remember Borders books? The 20,0000 employee retail bookstore (not quite as efficiently run as B&N) was amazon's first casualty. If B&N goes down Amazon will be able to squeeze publishers into exclusive agreements. That leaves them free to charge what they want to consumers and pay whatever they want to publishers.
Get one then realize why LCD is good for reading in the dark and horrible to use outside.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores." <-That's Borders!
The publishers are not paragons of virtue, they are wedded to the old business model that protects there profit margin and keeps authors, the content creators, in their back pockets. The future is staring at them and they can see their relavence is going to diminish but they will fight tooth and nail to protect it.
Wether it's Amazon, Apple or another company that disrupts them it's going to happen.
You seem to think authors are solely responsible for content. Read any popular book. The authors generally thank a long list of people, many of them who work at the publisher. These people include a variety of editors, proof readers, etc. Very few popular books get released without publishers spending a good amount of time and expense polishing the material. Your essentially advocating for a system where those resources are not sunk into publishing. No thanks.
It is telling authors are generally backing publishers.
Get one then realize why LCD is good for reading in the dark and horrible to use outside.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores." <-That's Borders!
There are two kindles, the Kindle fire (the crappy copy of the iPad and the only one that actually sells) and the eink kindle, (the one that never sold well and was difficult to read except in well lit areas (and because of which now come with a light).
The kindle fire screen doesn't look as good as an iPad in sun or darkness so you must be talking about the eink versions. First as I stated they never sold worth a dam (consumers smarter than bezos thought?) and they were wicked fragile (soft plastic bodies that when flexed cracked the fragile internals of the eink screen, which once cracked (no matter how small) would typically fail catastrophically. (I know... my daughter had two fail within months we sold the third on ebay and bought her a mini)
Yeah, good luck with that argument.
Second, what because Borders sold coffee & cakes they weren't a real bookstore?
I actually hope you are getting a paycheck from amazon.
Because they're myopic Apple Fanbois easily fooled by the Reality Distortion Field.
It's ok for Apple to put record and video stores out of business but not ok for Amazon to do the same thing to publishers.
You aren't keeping up with the current Apple hater mantra: Because -now- Steve Jobs wasn't a marketing huckster with a reality distortion field. Nooooo. He was a genius visionary who single handily conceived and designed every fantastically successful product Apple made (that they (apple) used to brutally blindside (and eventually break the back of) the beloved MS). More importantly, without him Apple is dooooooooooooomed!
You seem to think authors are solely responsible for content. Read any popular book. The authors generally thank a long list of people, many of them who work at the publisher. These people include a variety of editors, proof readers, etc. Very few popular books get released without publishers spending a good amount of time and expense polishing the material. Your essentially advocating for a system where those resources are not sunk into publishing. No thanks.
It is telling authors are generally backing publishers.
There was a time where writers were at the mercy of the traditional book publisher. The writers had to kiss people's butts if they wanted to make a living. The publishers would decide which books got published and which books did not. The consumers only read what the publishers wanted them to read.
Now with self publishing, whether it's on Amazon's or Apple's platform, the writers don't have to brown nose anymore to get their works published. They retain the rights to their work, have more control of the distribution, promoting & pricing, and keep a larger share of the profits.
They can hire people to proofread and 'polish' their work if they so desire.
Funny I don't hear you complaining about iTunes when they helped put record and video stores out of business. Apple is even in the ebook publishing business. Competing against the very group they colluded with. That is Antitrust.
Your ADD getting to you? This was in my previous post.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores." "What you don’t often hear is that small independent bookstores have seen three straight years of steady growth. This is something we celebrate."
Wrong. Piracy was killing the music store and music biz in general.
My ADD helps me avoid bullshit although it has failed from time to time, hence reading your posts.
My point is I don't have Prime. I use Netflix and other services that are less expensive and usually better so have zero need for Prime. Why would I pay a $99 a year fee when faster shipping is the one and only benefit to me? I can order almost anywhere else with free shipping and get what is essentially 2-4 day shipping for zero extra cost. Good online stores now ship the same day you order and UPS or FedEx can deliver to most of the country in 2-4 days. You can call it Prime, but everyone else just calls it good customers service.....and does not charge you extra for it.
Actually if you pay for prime, you get free shipping for next day or 2 days. My last year experience and I have bought lots of stuff of Amazon has been not only was their price better than any place I price compared, I got most everything in 2 days and a number of time I order early in the morning and had the item arrive the next days just over 24 hours. When I buy I do total cost to get it to my house and I got tired of website doing the low price bait click only to find out their shipping costs were 2x anyone else. I can tell you I have save in just shipping alone way more than the $99 I paid. I even shipped a number of heavy items which were well over 100 lbs.
I will give you that prime at some point will not be worth it, but I knew I would be buy lots of things this past year due to work I am doing on my house.
ADD again? You didn't answer who killed video stores. It wasn't piracy.
Where do you buy your music, movies and books from? <span style="line-height:1.4em;">You talk like you care about those businesses.</span>
If you say iTunes then it's hypocrites like you that put those stores out of business.
It's funny that those that will quickly proclaim "who wants physical media?" are now crying about the death of B&M book stores. Kinda hard to stop that snowball they helped start.
What is free about shipping that costs $99 a year? That is over $8 a month! Other sites have true free shipping that you don't have to pay for and the stuff may take only a day or two longer to get there than Prime. Any savings in the price of products at Amazon is eaten up by the cost of Prime. That is why they push it so much.
ADD again? You didn't answer who killed video stores. It wasn't piracy.
Where do you buy your music, movies and books from? <span style="line-height:1.4em;">You talk like you care about those businesses.</span>
If you say iTunes then it's hypocrites like you that put those stores out of business.
Well I don't buy much music and I prefer a physical copy of movies. I also don't stream netflix. I also prefer physical books. So basically you're wrong. But that's not a surprise.
Well I don't buy much music and I prefer a physical copy of movies. I also don't stream netflix. I also prefer physical books. So basically you're wrong. But that's not a surprise.
What killed video stores? Netflix.
I don't think so, different kind of animal (and yes I knew you were referring to the DVD's by mail)
Redbox, 99¢ DVD rentals certainly didn't help
Comcast, DishNetwork & the entire gang of "on demand" programming
but IMNTBHO the number one destroyer of video stores (besides themselves of course) was pirating via the bit torrent.
However a video store is not the same thing as a book store, not even the same genus or species.
I worked at Blockbuster for many years. Corporate greed killed Blockbuster. Viacom looked at Blockbuster only in one way which was to milk the cash cow as long as they could. It was not always that way. When I started and we were an independent franchisee, we were 100% focused on customer service. Free balloons to kids, plenty of help with knowledgeable staff to help you find videos in a well organized and clean store. Happy check out people. Then when Viacom took over, kids had to pay for balloon. Staff cost too much money so we had to cut it. Stores because cluttered and dirty. Staff was no longer happy because you had two people doing five peoples' jobs. And late fees were almost never waived because that was giving up money to the cow.
So if you make the experience miserable and soak people with late fees, what do you think is going to happen? In typical corporate fashion, the stupid run for cover. They blamed changing technology for the lose of business. But it was their own incompetence to stay focused on business fundamentals. Blockbuster in the early days got it. It was not about renting videos. It was the experience. Why do people go to Disney when there is a Six Flags near by? Viacom killed the experience. Then the business died.
Comments
Ebooks aren't sold in a vacuum. Cheap ebooks affect the sale of hard covers, which affects independent book stores, which affects the employees of those bookstores. Amazon isn't doing this for the benefit of the consumer. It's doing it to drive those physical book stores out of business.
And consequently the "digital revolution" is good for music. And bad for books. Why is this so?
Article fails to mention counter pro-Amazon anti-Hachette letter/petition, started independently back when Douglas Preston first started his anti-Amazon campaign, with over 8000 signatures, at http://www.change.org/petitions/hachette-stop-fighting-low-prices-and-fair-wages
For alternate perspectives, see aggregator http://www.thepassivevoice.com/ and http://authorearnings.com/
Hmmm, "thanks for your comment", but my comment never shows up..... Perhaps I failed to be politically correct or perhaps links to other sites aren't welcome....
"Nearly 1000" should more accurately be "slightly more than 900". Count was at 908 a day or two ago.
Article fails to mention counter letter/petition, pro-Amazon anti-Hachette, with more than 8000 signatures. Is on change dot org. Do a search on hugh howey and change dot org to find it (since links may be why my comments here aren't appearing).
For alternate perspectives on all this, look a site ThePassiveVoice and another site AuthorEarnings.
Does Amazon pay authors in advance, giving them the financial freedom to focus on their writing?
Glad that you asked. Yes they do!
Vincent Zandri hails from the future. He is a novelist from the day after tomorrow, when Amazon has remade the worlds of writing, printing, selling and reading books so thoroughly that there is hardly anything left besides Amazon.
Mr. Zandri, an author of mystery and suspense tales, is published by Thomas & Mercer, one of Amazon Publishing’s many book imprints. He is edited by Amazon editors and promoted by Amazon publicists to Amazon customers, nearly all of whom read his books in electronic form on Amazon’s e-readers, Amazon’s tablets and, soon, Amazon’s phones.
A few years ago he was reduced to returning bottles and cans for grocery money. Now his Amazon earnings pay for lengthy stays in Italy and Paris, as well as expeditions to the real Amazon. “I go wherever I want, do whatever I want and live however I want,” he said recently at a bar in Mill Valley, Calif., a San Francisco suburb where he was relaxing after a jaunt to Nepal.
Mr. Zandri, who 15 years ago had a $235,000 contract with a big New York house that went sour, has an answer. “Everything Amazon has promised me, it has fulfilled — and more,” he said. “They ask: ‘Are you happy, Vince? We just want to see you writing books.’ That’s the major difference between corporate-driven Big Five publishers, where the writer is not the most important ingredient in the soup, and Amazon Publishing, which places its writers on a pedestal.
Three weeks ago, just before he went to Nepal, Vincent Zandri signed a contract with Amazon for a new novel, “Everything Burns.” His $30,000 advance was immediately deposited in his bank account. By this point, he said, he is earning about what a junior lawyer makes at a big firm. Call it a comfortable six figures annually.
“It’s traditional publishing, but better, with a higher royalty rate,” he said. “I’m published by Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon India. Soon, Amazon Mars.” The company sent him a free Kindle, and now he gets most of his books from Amazon. Most of the movies he watches come from the site as well. “Amazon touches every bit of my life,” he said.
Mr. Zandri is so embedded in Amazon that he recently started wondering about it.
Two years ago, he wrote about publishers on his blog: “I know I’m supposed to cry for these people, but they had a chance to survive and in fact thrive in today’s digital book publishing world, but they haven’t. And now they are going the way of the eight-track. Bon voyage.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/technology/amazon-a-friendly-giant-as-long-as-its-fed.html?_r=0
Ebooks aren't sold in a vacuum. Cheap ebooks affect the sale of hard covers, which affects independent book stores, which affects the employees of those bookstores. Amazon isn't doing this for the benefit of the consumer. It's doing it to drive those physical book stores out of business.
Funny I don't hear you complaining about iTunes when they helped put record and video stores out of business. Apple is even in the ebook publishing business. Competing against the very group they colluded with. That is Antitrust.
Your ADD getting to you? This was in my previous post.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores."
"What you don’t often hear is that small independent bookstores have seen three straight years of steady growth. This is something we celebrate."
While I'm. It a fan at all of amazon I am trying to put blond and music side by side. And I get the impression that while in the music industry the publishers are the bad guys they are seen more positive with books.
And consequently the "digital revolution" is good for music. And bad for books. Why is this so?
Because they're myopic Apple Fanbois easily fooled by the Reality Distortion Field.
It's ok for Apple to put record and video stores out of business but not ok for Amazon to do the same thing to publishers.
For those who don't have an iPad (and are using a kindle eBook reader), get one (iPad)...
Consider what would happen if Barnes and Noble had to shutter their retail stores?
Remember Borders books? The 20,0000 employee retail bookstore (not quite as efficiently run as B&N) was amazon's first casualty. If B&N goes down Amazon will be able to squeeze publishers into exclusive agreements. That leaves them free to charge what they want to consumers and pay whatever they want to publishers.
Get one then realize why LCD is good for reading in the dark and horrible to use outside.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores." <-That's Borders!
You seem to think authors are solely responsible for content. Read any popular book. The authors generally thank a long list of people, many of them who work at the publisher. These people include a variety of editors, proof readers, etc. Very few popular books get released without publishers spending a good amount of time and expense polishing the material. Your essentially advocating for a system where those resources are not sunk into publishing. No thanks.
It is telling authors are generally backing publishers.
Get one then realize why LCD is good for reading in the dark and horrible to use outside.
"The good news is that the bookstores going out of business were the ones that didn’t feel like bookstores." <-That's Borders!
There are two kindles, the Kindle fire (the crappy copy of the iPad and the only one that actually sells) and the eink kindle, (the one that never sold well and was difficult to read except in well lit areas (and because of which now come with a light).
The kindle fire screen doesn't look as good as an iPad in sun or darkness so you must be talking about the eink versions. First as I stated they never sold worth a dam (consumers smarter than bezos thought?) and they were wicked fragile (soft plastic bodies that when flexed cracked the fragile internals of the eink screen, which once cracked (no matter how small) would typically fail catastrophically. (I know... my daughter had two fail within months we sold the third on ebay and bought her a mini)
Yeah, good luck with that argument.
Second, what because Borders sold coffee & cakes they weren't a real bookstore?
I actually hope you are getting a paycheck from amazon.
Because they're myopic Apple Fanbois easily fooled by the Reality Distortion Field.
It's ok for Apple to put record and video stores out of business but not ok for Amazon to do the same thing to publishers.
You aren't keeping up with the current Apple hater mantra: Because -now- Steve Jobs wasn't a marketing huckster with a reality distortion field. Nooooo. He was a genius visionary who single handily conceived and designed every fantastically successful product Apple made (that they (apple) used to brutally blindside (and eventually break the back of) the beloved MS). More importantly, without him Apple is dooooooooooooomed!
Try to keep up little boy.
You seem to think authors are solely responsible for content. Read any popular book. The authors generally thank a long list of people, many of them who work at the publisher. These people include a variety of editors, proof readers, etc. Very few popular books get released without publishers spending a good amount of time and expense polishing the material. Your essentially advocating for a system where those resources are not sunk into publishing. No thanks.
It is telling authors are generally backing publishers.
There was a time where writers were at the mercy of the traditional book publisher. The writers had to kiss people's butts if they wanted to make a living. The publishers would decide which books got published and which books did not. The consumers only read what the publishers wanted them to read.
Now with self publishing, whether it's on Amazon's or Apple's platform, the writers don't have to brown nose anymore to get their works published. They retain the rights to their work, have more control of the distribution, promoting & pricing, and keep a larger share of the profits.
They can hire people to proofread and 'polish' their work if they so desire.
Wrong. Piracy was killing the music store and music biz in general.
My ADD helps me avoid bullshit although it has failed from time to time, hence reading your posts.
My point is I don't have Prime. I use Netflix and other services that are less expensive and usually better so have zero need for Prime. Why would I pay a $99 a year fee when faster shipping is the one and only benefit to me? I can order almost anywhere else with free shipping and get what is essentially 2-4 day shipping for zero extra cost. Good online stores now ship the same day you order and UPS or FedEx can deliver to most of the country in 2-4 days. You can call it Prime, but everyone else just calls it good customers service.....and does not charge you extra for it.
Actually if you pay for prime, you get free shipping for next day or 2 days. My last year experience and I have bought lots of stuff of Amazon has been not only was their price better than any place I price compared, I got most everything in 2 days and a number of time I order early in the morning and had the item arrive the next days just over 24 hours. When I buy I do total cost to get it to my house and I got tired of website doing the low price bait click only to find out their shipping costs were 2x anyone else. I can tell you I have save in just shipping alone way more than the $99 I paid. I even shipped a number of heavy items which were well over 100 lbs.
I will give you that prime at some point will not be worth it, but I knew I would be buy lots of things this past year due to work I am doing on my house.
Wrong. Piracy was killing the music store and music biz in general.
My ADD helps me avoid bullshit although it has failed from time to time, hence reading your posts.
ADD again? You didn't answer who killed video stores. It wasn't piracy.
Where do you buy your music, movies and books from? You talk like you care about those businesses.
If you say iTunes then it's hypocrites like you that put those stores out of business.
It's funny that those that will quickly proclaim "who wants physical media?" are now crying about the death of B&M book stores. Kinda hard to stop that snowball they helped start.
What is free about shipping that costs $99 a year? That is over $8 a month! Other sites have true free shipping that you don't have to pay for and the stuff may take only a day or two longer to get there than Prime. Any savings in the price of products at Amazon is eaten up by the cost of Prime. That is why they push it so much.
Well I don't buy much music and I prefer a physical copy of movies. I also don't stream netflix. I also prefer physical books. So basically you're wrong. But that's not a surprise.
What killed video stores? Netflix.
Well I don't buy much music and I prefer a physical copy of movies. I also don't stream netflix. I also prefer physical books. So basically you're wrong. But that's not a surprise.
What killed video stores? Netflix.
I don't think so, different kind of animal (and yes I knew you were referring to the DVD's by mail)
Redbox, 99¢ DVD rentals certainly didn't help
Comcast, DishNetwork & the entire gang of "on demand" programming
but IMNTBHO the number one destroyer of video stores (besides themselves of course) was pirating via the bit torrent.
However a video store is not the same thing as a book store, not even the same genus or species.
I worked at Blockbuster for many years. Corporate greed killed Blockbuster. Viacom looked at Blockbuster only in one way which was to milk the cash cow as long as they could. It was not always that way. When I started and we were an independent franchisee, we were 100% focused on customer service. Free balloons to kids, plenty of help with knowledgeable staff to help you find videos in a well organized and clean store. Happy check out people. Then when Viacom took over, kids had to pay for balloon. Staff cost too much money so we had to cut it. Stores because cluttered and dirty. Staff was no longer happy because you had two people doing five peoples' jobs. And late fees were almost never waived because that was giving up money to the cow.
So if you make the experience miserable and soak people with late fees, what do you think is going to happen? In typical corporate fashion, the stupid run for cover. They blamed changing technology for the lose of business. But it was their own incompetence to stay focused on business fundamentals. Blockbuster in the early days got it. It was not about renting videos. It was the experience. Why do people go to Disney when there is a Six Flags near by? Viacom killed the experience. Then the business died.