By Bonnie Stanard
Can’t live with it. Can’t live without it. Is a great relationship going bad?
We writers, ignored by NYC’s legacy publishers, fell for Amazon in a big way. It seduced us with promises of newfound horizons, priceless connections, and a way to publish our manuscripts. We could forget the painful past. Didn’t matter that agents and publishers refused to accept our queries. Nor, as it has turned out, did it matter whether or not we could write. Amazon arrived on the scene and gave us the means to publish and sell our books.
Last week several organizations delivered a letter to the chairman of the US House Antitrust Subcommittee asking the government to look into Amazon’s unfair business practices, which have resulted in its controlling as much as 50% of all book distribution. The letter is signed by organizations representing booksellers (think independent bookstores), publishers (the big and little guys), and writers (Authors Guild).
They have accused Amazon of:
1) below-cost pricing of books to squash competition
2) refusing distribution unless the supplier purchases advertising
3) requiring publishers to offer Amazon similar (or better) terms as any competitor
4) requiring publishers to restrict price discounts to consumers
5) steering customers to illegal sellers of counterfeit/unauthorized books
6) manipulating discovery tools to make books hard to find without purchase of ads
7) steering consumers toward Amazon's own products
We might ask, “What does this have to do with me? I don’t publish books. I don’t own a bookstore. I haven’t written a best seller.. or second best or third best. So what?” Only the writer with no expectation of reaching an audience has nothing to lose.
We may be tempted to say this letter is just sour grapes from the losers. Amazon has taken on the competition and out produced and out distributed books. Now the losers are appealing to the government for help.
Should the government curtail Amazon? Let’s consider another question. Where do you buy quality books? Not at a local bookstore. We know what’s happened to them. Online alternatives to Amazon? Wordery, Barnes & Noble, Powell, companies struggling to stay alive or hoping Amazon will buy them. What has happened to retail booksellers?
Do we writers have viable options to Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon) for self-publishing? There’s Apple, but if you go there, you have to figure out how to sell the book once it’s published. Amazon cleverly unites publishing with selling, a move that puts a squeeze on other print-on-demand (POD) publishers. In other words, those publishers survive by making a deal to distribute with Amazon. Which is what IngramSpark and bookbaby have done. Does this sound like a bottleneck to commercial traffic?
Regardless of how much Amazon has done for us writers, to suppose it can do no wrong is naive. Its position in the marketplace should be secured by innovations, not suppression of the competition. I like Amazon, but I don’t want to be forced to like it, whether to publish a book or buy a screwdriver.
Great information. Although it has been around for a while, Amazon is fairly new when we look at the history of buying and selling books. Regulation throughout the tech world is a real need and a very real conundrum.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a strong independent national writer’s organization is the answer!(?). Maybe writers can find a way to use technology to their advantage.
Ideas?