A simpler explanation for Amazon offering 2 - 3 day shipping for Paul Ryan's book is that Amazon purposely avoided aggravating an influential Congressman. This is a much lesser accusation than systematically favoring books of a certain political bias with quicker shipping times.
Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
191–200 of 208 posts
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's easy unless Amazon has signed people to exclusive contracts, such that your new startup can't get any of the authors people want to read.
Amazon doesn't require exclusive contracts. > your new startup can't get any of the authors people want to read. If Amazon is not serving the needs of those authors, they'll be interested in switching horses.
> Amazon doesn't require exclusive contracts.
... yet. What's to stop them from doing so when they've killed off a few more of their competitors?
> If Amazon is not serving the needs of those authors, they'll be interested in switching horses.
Assuming there are horses left which are viable to switch to.
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would argue that capitalism does not favor this "concentration of power," in fact quite the opposite. That's nice and all, but history says otherwise, with the Gilded Age as the primary example: Monopolies existed in the relative regulatory vacuum, and it took government power to break them up.
Referencing the time period in which the economy grew at its fastest rate in history in regards to GDP and real wages? Gilded Age transformed US into the economic superpower that it is today -- regulatory vacuum helped this. Government corruption and high tariffs helped prevent competition and helped establish the monopolies it later set out to break up. RRs benefitted from the creation of the interstate commerce com…
> Referencing the time period in which the economy grew at its fastest rate in history in regards to GDP and real wages? Gilded Age transformed US into the economic superpower that it is today -- regulatory vacuum helped this.
It optimized for massive growth at the expense of everything else, yes. That's not what most people actually want. Most people understand they aren't going to be Vanderbilts.
> Government corruption and high tariffs helped prevent competition and helped establish the monopolies it later set out to break up. RRs benefitted from the creation of the interstate commerce commission
So government did everything wrong and businesses did everything good, then and always, for ever and ever, amen. And you Austrian-School Libertarians wonder why nobody takes you seriously.
More to the point, do you not understand the economic benefits of massive vertical and horizontal integration, and how difficult it is to break into a field like railroads, even if we do posit a total regulatory vacuum?
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is, there doesn't seem to be much elasticity in the size of the market. Books are rivalrous goods: an hour spent reading book A is an hour you can't spend reading book B, or watching a movie. And a lot of people prefer to watch movies -- or play computer games, or kick a ball around -- to reading books for recreation. Unless we can work out how to convince more people that reading for pleasure is fun then…
Its an error to assume folks actually READ the books they buy. I have a tall stack of books I'll get around to reading. I paid for them all of course.
I think it's also an error to assume this really has any bearing on what Charlie was talking about. This gets into the "I once dove to the bottom of the ocean and brought back a pretty shell, so that's a viable place to open a curio shop" fallacy. The fact that a subset of readers will buy a few more books than they'll read doesn't mean that books are ultimately non-rival goods. Unless there are a large number of potential consumers with effectively unlimited willingness to buy books, the pie is still very much fixed in size despite a couple of pieces being very slightly bigger than others.
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that capitalism does not favor this "concentration of power," in fact quite the opposite. Most industries where there is huge concentration of power (i.e. banks) is largely due to regulation. These new SV companies disrupted other big businesses and will eventually be disrupted by another wave of businesses themselves. A look at the top 10 companies by market cap in 1995 is probably very different than…
You're looking purely at the market caps and revenues, while the economy is also a function of employment and political influence. Heavily regulated segments might have fewer players (at first), but those are regulated and their power is curtailed. And like another commenter said, unregulated markets (and historical examples are aplenty, especially in the US), quickly see consolidation and concentration of power in t…
Love the discussion. Will write a long response because I don’t have time for a short one. In regard to the first paragraph can you name any examples? The most regulated industries have the most power. Banking, energy & utilities, healthcare insurance are all examples. Can you name one sustained US monopoly that has existed without government assistance?
2nd paragraph. Uber might transfer risk to workers but without uber these workers wouldn't even have jobs as taxicabbers due to the cost of fees/regulation government applies to taxi services. I find it ironic the employees are complaining about a company they voluntarily work for, and arguing against the practices that allow the company to exist and employ them. Uber has ample competition so I wouldn’t say they exactly wield power— they are trying to fight the consolidated power where their competitors are in bed with the government whose laws provide a barrier of entry to the existing inefficient industry. Same thing is happening with Telsa. Whenever a transformative company enters an industry, the existing players lobby government for regulation and/or to enforce the regulation already in place. Throughout history it has been 1.big company(ies) establish huge market share in an industry 2. Said companies lobby government for regulation that prevents new entrants. RR, coal, automotive, finance, health insurance, utility industries have all done this.
3rd paragraph. This is ridiculous. Government’s role is to serve the people. Government knows better than the people? The government needs to protect citizens from themselves? How would they determine when an “unelected body” gains too much control over people’s lives? The fact is the free market determines winners and losers and is the most efficient way to allocate resources. Transactions only occur when both parties think they’ll benefit. No one is forced to do anything. To think the government knows better than everyone else is naïve at best and destructive at worst.
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
> where do they go? To Amazons various competitors: Google Play Books, iBooks, Barnes and Noble...
Which are all very small relative to the size of the Amazon market. You can't practically compete and not sell through Amazon, hence the problem with a monopsony.
I haven't found a great data source for book market-share, but I don't think Amazon is quite as dominant as you imply.
"about a 50% market share for books sold online (that’s ebooks and printed books sold via the Internet)" http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/is-amazon-invincible/
You don't even need to not sell through Amazon to compete with them, just be willing to take a smaller cut with competitors that give you a more favorable terms (allowing them to undercut Amazon).
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which are all very small relative to the size of the Amazon market. You can't practically compete and not sell through Amazon, hence the problem with a monopsony.
I haven't found a great data source for book market-share, but I don't think Amazon is quite as dominant as you imply. "about a 50% market share for books sold online (that’s ebooks and printed books sold via the Internet)" http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/is-amazon-invincible/ You don't even need to not sell through Amazon to compete with them, just be willing to take a smaller cut with competitors that give you…
So a smaller cut with a worse outlet with smaller reach.
That sounds like a recipe for success to me. What about you?
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
>When one buyer represents 50-60% of sales, ... One party to the negotiation can walk away; the other cannot. I don't follow the logic here. Your fatalistic assessment assumes Hachette (and other publishers) are paralyzed and cannot adapt . However, the business world isn't static therefore Hachette can walk away. (If not this particular contract renewal because of timing pressure then at least the next one -- if the…
"Rethink/reprioritize other reseller relationships and offer better terms to Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, etc" Wasn't this exactly what happened and resulted in Amazon getting the Att. General to investigate antitrust allegations?
Besides that whole price fixing thing, sure.
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see this as a problem. Let the market decide. Probably my treasured reading is your rubbish and just possibly, vice versa.
The problem is that nobody has come up with a good way to filter through the self-published dross to find the gold. Without the publishers filtering you can't just pick a book at random and be ensured it probably won't make you want to claw your eyes out (at least publishers would clean up the major spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and incoherent plots). So what is left is popularity, and as already established…
>The problem is that nobody has come up with a good way to filter through the self-published dross to find the gold.
If you self-publish without doing an ounce of marketing through curation of an audience, then your book falls under the "vanity publishing" sphere. Then why should anyone care if your work is good? You clearly didn't do a good enough job of selling it.
(Note that publishers don't do anything for first time authors in this regard, either.)
Re: Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not O.K.
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just a matter of how much money the writer will get. And even when talking about that, you assume that any published book will sell, and that's not true. When you publish through a publishing house, they assume the financial risk. I hope you get back your $10.000 (and much more), but it surely is not a given, most books don't sell much. It's the same situation we have with startups and VC's, the publisher ca…
>When you publish through a publishing house, they assume the financial risk. Of what? The cost of the books? Because advances have gone basically to zero. I was offered none. As far as your other questions: Books won't sell unless you curate an audience prior to writing it. And if you do that, the need for a publisher disappears quickly.
From what you say I assume that you think a publishing house's only job is to take your manuscript to the printer. Well, no, there's much work involved in the editing and design process prior to that. There's people working on the logistics and marketing of books. There're legal, financial, technical and administrative issues (as in any business). And paying all those, plus the books, costs money.
I don't know with which publishing houses you've been in contact with, and I think most of what you say comes from a bad experience with dubious publishers. But, in a serious one you work with an editor, whose job is to read your manuscript and tell you what's good and what can be improved, and how it can be improved. A good editor with some knowledge of the field your book is about is an enormous help.