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A Message from the Amazon Books Team

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Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#11

Post by berkay »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9
kjksf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep propagating the myth that it's all Amazon's doing. "Amazon took unilateral action to punish authors" ? The contract between Amazon and Hachette expired. They started negotiating a new contract. They can't agree to terms hence Amazon limiting Hachette's stok because, well, they no longer have a contract to sell Hachette's books on Amazon. There was nothing "unilateral" about it. Amazon doesn't agree to Hachet…

I'm not doubting that's the case, I honestly don't know - but Amazon could have been much clearer about that. Using the language "when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store." makes it seem like a deliberate and voluntary action on their part and seems really dumb if your claim is accurate.

It does not seem all that even. As I understand it Amazon is demanding Hachette to sell their books at a certain price. This is highly unusual. Amazon can demand higher percentage of the sales, etc. but controlling the price of your product? As a business I would never agree to such conditions. And due to Amazon's massive reach, this starts smelling like blackmail. Why do author's side with Hachette? I'd speculate that people are concerned with having a single player with such massive power, and this episode confirms their worst fears.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#12

Post by parennoob »

clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

> I can't really see a future for monolithic publishers.

What about monolithic retailers? I might be totally mistaken, but I think Amazon has a near-monopoly on selling ebooks at this point. Here is their Kindle VP saying they have 70-80% of the market (http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-we-have-70-80-percent-of-e-b...).

I don't understand antitrust regulation very well, but could Amazon have some sort of obligation to accept Hachette's terms because they have this near-monopoly (on what will almost certainly be the dominant form of reading in the next 20 years)?

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#13

Post by mcintyre1994 »

berkay wrote: post #11
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not doubting that's the case, I honestly don't know - but Amazon could have been much clearer about that. Using the language "when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store." makes it seem like a deliberate and voluntary action on their part and seems really dumb if your claim is accurate.

It does not seem all that even. As I understand it Amazon is demanding Hachette to sell their books at a certain price. This is highly unusual. Amazon can demand higher percentage of the sales, etc. but controlling the price of your product? As a business I would never agree to such conditions. And due to Amazon's massive reach, this starts smelling like blackmail. Why do author's side with Hachette? I'd speculate th…

I see what you mean - Amazon are different in ebooks to paperback etc because they want a Kindle walled garden. Their goals align pretty well with consumer good imo, but it's still a walled garden they control.

My guess is that they want to standardise pricing much better than they are able to rely on publishers doing (understandably on both parts). Even Apple's walled garden lets you set the price doesn't it? I guess maybe consumers see less variance in ebooks and Amazon want to simplify things.

Amazon seem to better support my best interests as a consumer - and I plan to buy a Kindle soon fwiw - but I think trying to compare Amazon to anything traditional is going to fail because their model is so different - and at the end is basically a walled garden they need to control as much as possible.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#14

Post by x0x0 »

clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

Who, exactly, is saying amazon is acting illegally not listing or stocking Hachette books? I doubt you can find much of anyone; I'm not sure how debating strawman adds anything.

Further, cheaper books sell more yields more revenue is econ for tots version of capitalism. What book publishers are doing is classic price discrimination, and amazon is damaging it. Note that amazons statistics -- such as they are, and they certainly come with no backing data, and are hard to take at face value since they (stunningly!) support amazon's goals -- exclude sales off amazon.

Authors have seen how apple, amazon, walmart, etc behave towards suppliers. Where amazon to become more of a monopoly, they'll turn their price cutting on authors. It's well within authors' interests (and frankly mine, as a reader) to preserve a price structure that supports writing. Finally, assuming that authors somehow are agitating for "fewer books sold, higher prices, and smaller royalty payments" assumes that authors are all somehow stupid. Perhaps you should revisit your assumptions that lead you to assume that's what authors desire.

ps: since we're almost all developers here -- selling, in one form or another, software with nearly 0 marginal cost -- there's not a person here with any ground to stand on to claim that prices should reflect underlying costs.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#15

Post by abhimir »

berkay wrote: post #11
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not doubting that's the case, I honestly don't know - but Amazon could have been much clearer about that. Using the language "when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store." makes it seem like a deliberate and voluntary action on their part and seems really dumb if your claim is accurate.

It does not seem all that even. As I understand it Amazon is demanding Hachette to sell their books at a certain price. This is highly unusual. Amazon can demand higher percentage of the sales, etc. but controlling the price of your product? As a business I would never agree to such conditions. And due to Amazon's massive reach, this starts smelling like blackmail. Why do author's side with Hachette? I'd speculate th…

"As I understand it Amazon is demanding Hachette to sell their books at a certain price. This is highly unusual"

how is this different from Walmart deciding at what price it sells its suppliers' product. Almost all the retailers decide the final selling price of suppliers' products, that is the reason they are able to undercut mom&pop retail stores. Only exception on supplier side is Apple and to some extent Bose who have the brand leverage to dictate their prices to retailers.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#16

Post by mcintyre1994 »

parennoob wrote: post #12
clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

> I can't really see a future for monolithic publishers. What about monolithic retailers? I might be totally mistaken, but I think Amazon has a near-monopoly on selling ebooks at this point. Here is their Kindle VP saying they have 70-80% of the market ( http://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-we-have-70-80-percent-of-e-b... ). I don't understand antitrust regulation very well, but could Amazon have some sort of obligation t…

This article [0] seems to put B&N and Apple around 20% each earlier this year pitting for no. 2 - with Apple (and Amazon) gaining against B&N. While Apple have decent market share (that's probably roughly comparable to iOS smartphone share worldwide?) and continue to sell a zillion iPads probably with iBooks installed and certainly with iBooks the only app you can buy ebooks in Amazon are probably pretty protected at a guess.

[0] http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/is-apple-now-the-no-2-e...

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#17

Post by DanBC »

rjknight wrote: post #10
clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

It could just be bad writing, but Amazon's point about elasticity reads like a sleight-of-hand trick to me. They say: > So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. So, 74,000 people choose to buy the cheaper book. Great! But without the price cut, those people might have bought other books. Maybe some ot…

Well, if I buy two books at $15 each I would probably buy three at €10 each. So the individual book has more readers and some other book has more readers.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#18

Post by baddox »

rjknight wrote: post #10
clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

It could just be bad writing, but Amazon's point about elasticity reads like a sleight-of-hand trick to me. They say: > So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. So, 74,000 people choose to buy the cheaper book. Great! But without the price cut, those people might have bought other books. Maybe some ot…

I think what you're missing is that Amazon's point, that lower ebook prices are generally good for all parties, applies to all ebooks. They do use the phrase "a particular e-book" in their example, but I assumed that the real desire is for all ebooks to get a similarly proportional discount.

Of course, even if we just consider a price drop on a single ebook, it's still a valid point that this helps that ebook compete against other ebooks that don't change their prices, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Re: A Message from the Amazon Books Team

#20

Post by Torn »

rjknight wrote: post #10
clickok wrote: post #8

It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons: 1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers…

It could just be bad writing, but Amazon's point about elasticity reads like a sleight-of-hand trick to me. They say: > So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. So, 74,000 people choose to buy the cheaper book. Great! But without the price cut, those people might have bought other books. Maybe some ot…

Steam Sales have already proven that lowering prices leads to more overall profit
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