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Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#111

Post by nl »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #108
Turing_Machine wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely correct. They're like the entrenched interests at Kodak that tried to stop the development of digital cameras (which Kodak actually invented ) to support film sales. All they managed to do was ensure that the digital cameras were developed by companies other than Kodak, and now Kodak is bankrupt. The same thing is happening with ebooks. In many genres, 50% or more of the best-selling ebooks are eit…

I have to ask: In what way did Kodak try to stop digital cameras? They failed to remain relevant in digital photography, but I don't remember them trying to stop it.

I think the OP meant they stopped to development of digital cameras inside Kodak.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#112

Post by Turing_Machine »

nl wrote: post #111
TorKlingberg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to ask: In what way did Kodak try to stop digital cameras? They failed to remain relevant in digital photography, but I don't remember them trying to stop it.

I think the OP meant they stopped to development of digital cameras inside Kodak.

Exactly. Managerial elements within Kodak did their best to strangle digital photography at birth.

If your little corporate fiefdom is based on film sales, you're going to try to stop digital even if that's not in the long-term interests of the company, or so the story has it.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#113

Post by jrockway »

chris_mahan wrote: post #85

Why don't the publishers make it easy to buy books from them, instead of all this rigamarole about rights and regions? I want to go to your website, pay with a credit card, and you ship it to me, anywhere in the world, and fast. No, instead, I go to a local bookstore, they don't have it. I go to Amazon, they have it. I order it, two days later it's at my door, for 30% off the price on the back of the book. So everybo…

This is a great way of putting it. Their business doesn't need a middleman. They added a middleman. Now they don't like the middleman.

The tears, they just aren't coming.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#114

Post by higherpurpose »

incision wrote: post #52

Honest questions here... What is supposed to happen here? This article and each of the others linked don't offer much beyond jabs at Amazon. As far as I can tell, publishers are unhappy with Amazon - period. Two years ago the hot news was about Amazon pricing books too low [1]. Now at least part of the complaint is that Amazon isn't discounting enough and allowing prices to approach list price - which I assume is set…

It would be nice of Amazon removed DRM the same way Apple did for music.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#115

Post by dap »

chris_mahan wrote: post #85

Why don't the publishers make it easy to buy books from them, instead of all this rigamarole about rights and regions? I want to go to your website, pay with a credit card, and you ship it to me, anywhere in the world, and fast. No, instead, I go to a local bookstore, they don't have it. I go to Amazon, they have it. I order it, two days later it's at my door, for 30% off the price on the back of the book. So everybo…

... and since many people did the same thing, and many of the local bookstores have closed (particularly those with large selections), Amazon effectively has considerable influence over what kinds of things most of us read. Tough indeed. For us.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#116

Post by dap »

chimeracoder wrote: post #14

> “I have supported Amazon for as long as Amazon has existed. I’ve been published for 20 years now and you have sold so many of my books,” she wrote in a Facebook posting she also sent to the retailer. Why does she not blame her publisher for setting the price of her books to be too high[0]? This seems to be a regular merchant/vendor price dispute - nothing new about it. The publisher is just a middleman here[1] - if…

> Why does she not blame her publisher for setting the price of her books to be too high[0]? This seems to be a regular merchant/vendor price dispute - nothing new about it.

Because Amazon's the one making it hard for her readers to get their hands on her books. We don't know it has anything to do with the prices they want for her books.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#117

Post by dap »

waveman2 wrote: post #90
dragonwriter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I like a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy but couldn't the book just be... unavailable? Its unavailable in the sense that Amazon doesn't make it available -- so it is, literally, unavailable from Amazon . Strictly speaking, this is not inaccurate, it just doesn't mean what people who trust Amazon's comprehensiveness are likely to think it means, as its not unavailable from the publisher, which is why its a…

It's unavailable in the sense that you can actually buy it now. I just did. That is, in the sense that it is available . And right now the claim made is demonstrably false, if not a deliberate lie. Seriously people you need to confirm your facts. Not everything you read in the papers is true .

It's definitely unavailable right now, for me. Glad you were able to order it, but your ability to do so once doesn't mean many people aren't prevented.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#118

Post by chongli »

eridius wrote: post #105
chongli wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't see how anyone can say with a straight face that the new entrant in a market is "fuck[ing] over" the dominant player. Because Apple leveraged an existing market where they were the dominant player (iOS). You could've said the same thing about Internet Explorer being a new entrant to the browser market, back when they fucked over Netscape.

iOS is not a market in of itself. It certainly wasn't the dominant way to read eBooks (the Kindle was, to the best of my knowledge). You're trying to narrowly define a market purely for the purposes of claiming Apple was the dominant player, but you aren't explaining how Apple could leverage iOS in any fashion. And even if you do purely concern yourself with reading eBooks on smartphones and tablets (and ignore the f…

I didn't say iOS was a market. It's the player, the market is mobile operating systems. It's no longer the dominant player now, however.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#119

Post by eridius »

chongli wrote: post #118
eridius wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS is not a market in of itself. It certainly wasn't the dominant way to read eBooks (the Kindle was, to the best of my knowledge). You're trying to narrowly define a market purely for the purposes of claiming Apple was the dominant player, but you aren't explaining how Apple could leverage iOS in any fashion. And even if you do purely concern yourself with reading eBooks on smartphones and tablets (and ignore the f…

I didn't say iOS was a market. It's the player , the market is mobile operating systems. It's no longer the dominant player now, however.

It never was.

Despite what various pundits keep claiming over and over again, iOS never had a majority share of the smartphone market.

Re: Amazon Flexes Its Muscles in Fight Against Publishers

#120

Post by eridius »

Oletros wrote: post #106
eridius wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to claim that somehow this whole affair affected book prices for the smaller publishers that didn't have agreements with Apple? Because for both of us to be right, all the smaller publishers must have dropped their prices precipitously to offset this supposed increase across the board in the prices of the 5 big publishers.

I'm trying to say that ebook prices from publishers other than the 5 accused are irrelevant. The fact is that the ebook average price from the accused publishers went up, it is irrelevant for that case that the total market average prices were down.

Ok, so you are saying that the price of the other publishers went down, and apparently dropped enough to offset the fact that they're, well, smaller publishers, and therefore a smaller part of the book market.

I don't think that's true. I have never heard that the smaller publishers kept dropping their prices.

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