Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 133 posts

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#21

Post by wdewind »

coryl wrote: post #4

We believe 35% should go to the author, 35% to the publisher and 30% to Amazon. What do publishers even do with regards to e-book distribution? Are they going the way of the record label company?

They are giving people advances so that they can live while they write the book full time. An example is someone who used to be a journalist can use their success as a journalist to sign a book deal and work on that. It's similar to raising a seed round.

IMO they are going the way of the record label. Some publishing houses and record labels will continue to add value, while larger ones who used to use their brand to add value and had scaled to a point where that is their main value proposition are going to have a hard time, as we are seeing right now in OP.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#22

Post by isomorphic »

Amazon is using language like "e-book(s) sold" when the reality is that they mean "e-book license(s) sold." The difference may be subtle, but if an e-book comes with DRM, the buyer certainly does not "own" it. Amazon even makes that point themselves, as they promote e-books as having "no secondary market."

This is an important point when you consider the vendor lock-in of the Kindle "ecosystem." Instead of "e-book," a better phrase might be "Kindle software."

Amazon should be careful of throwing stones about illegal collusion as they approach market domination. It will be very easy for them to make a mistake which runs afoul of anti-trust law.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#23

Post by jmedefind »

fpgeek wrote: post #20

I'm a bit surprised that Amazon said listed "no returns" as one of the differences with ebooks. I have personal experience with their incredibly generous ebook return policy (right in line with their other generous return policies). Is this an implicit admission that Amazon is eating the cost of those returns? Or do they mean something specific like the physical infrastructure for returns?

When I worked at a bookstore we would ship boxes full of un-sold books back to the publishers every month (Mostly consisting of cheap Romance novels). I imagine having to track and handle all of that to be a major cost to publishers.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#24

Post by rahimnathwani »

isomorphic wrote: post #22

Amazon is using language like "e-book(s) sold" when the reality is that they mean "e-book license(s) sold." The difference may be subtle, but if an e-book comes with DRM, the buyer certainly does not "own" it. Amazon even makes that point themselves, as they promote e-books as having "no secondary market." This is an important point when you consider the vendor lock-in of the Kindle "ecosystem." Instead of "e-book,"…

DRM vs. no DRM

Sale vs. licence

These are two separate issues.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#25

Post by Anechoic »

coryl wrote: post #7
krschultz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The publishers and record labels are doing the same thing they were before - curation and editing. The book printers & CD burners are out of the mix, but they were never that expensive anyway. There are still fixed costs associated with a book (editor) or an album (studio time), not to mention the marketing costs. Are they worth 35% of the profit? I don't think so. But probably more than 0%. I personally think it sho…

10% is far too little. Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices, handling payment/currency, and all the dirty work necessary to get the device in the hands of the customer in the first place.

Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices

Which shouldn't that be built into the price of those devices?

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#26

Post by ghshephard »

While I buy into many of the arguments being made here, Some of these points don't make sense. For example,

". And that 74% increase in copies sold makes it much more likely that the title will make it onto the national bestseller lists. (Any author who's trying to get on one of the national bestseller lists should insist to their publisher that their e-book be priced at $9.99 or lower.)"

Well, that's all well and good until everyone prices their e-books at $9.99 or lower, at which point we're back to square one. Unless the objective is to then have people who want a leg up to price their books at $8.99...

Also got a bit nasty when they mention, "ilegally colluded with their competitors" - was this ever established? I thought the publishers settled before it went to court, and only Apple was found guilty.

Finally, Love how Amazon is now trying to drive a wedge between the publishers and authors - "While we believe 35% should go to the author and 35% to Hachette, the way this would actually work is that we would send 70% of the total revenue to Hachette, and they would decide how much to share with the author. We believe Hachette is sharing too small a portion with the author today, but ultimately that is not our call."

This is Amazon turning up the heat on the publishers. Remember, Amazon/Bezos are ruthless - they could not care at all what is fair - but they are going to use every tool in their kit to win at this negotiation.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#27

Post by jamesbritt »

lesterbuck wrote: post #18
JohnTHaller wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The publisher can always sell directly as an unencrypted EPUB and MOBI (works on Kindle) to the consumer and set their own pricing and percentages.

Not exactly. Turns out you can sell via Amazon, or you can sell directly, but if you use the undocumented Amazon-only tool to construct your .mobi, you can't sell that directly. And Amazon is now blocking the output of many/all other ebook construction software so you can't use Send to Kindle or email. USB is the only option to load a book. http://devblog.avdi.org/2014/04/02/why-does-amazon-hate-eboo...

You can use numerous other tools to create the mobi and sell that eleswhere while you also sell the kindle mobi on Amazon.

I've yet to run into a problem sending all sorts of files, ebook or otherwise (aside from epub), to my Kindle.

That article seems to overstate issues with generating files readable on Kindle.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#28

Post by tedks »

ghshephard wrote: post #26

While I buy into many of the arguments being made here, Some of these points don't make sense. For example, ". And that 74% increase in copies sold makes it much more likely that the title will make it onto the national bestseller lists. (Any author who's trying to get on one of the national bestseller lists should insist to their publisher that their e-book be priced at $9.99 or lower.)" Well, that's all well and go…

> Remember, Amazon/Bezos are ruthless - they could not care at all what is fair - but they are going to use every tool in their kit to win at this negotiation.

Does any company of that size care what's "fair"?

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#29

Post by shiven »

ghshephard wrote: post #26

While I buy into many of the arguments being made here, Some of these points don't make sense. For example, ". And that 74% increase in copies sold makes it much more likely that the title will make it onto the national bestseller lists. (Any author who's trying to get on one of the national bestseller lists should insist to their publisher that their e-book be priced at $9.99 or lower.)" Well, that's all well and go…

Amazon/Bezos are ruthless - they could not care at all what is fair

I fail to see how the authors getting 35%, unhindered by the publisher's whims, can be unfair.

Re: Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption

#30

Post by walterbell »

Anechoic wrote: post #25
coryl wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% is far too little. Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices, handling payment/currency, and all the dirty work necessary to get the device in the hands of the customer in the first place.

Amazon is R&D'ing and manufacturing tablet/e-reader devices Which shouldn't that be built into the price of those devices?

If it was, there would be a healthy e-reader market with competing devices and choices for consumers, which would deprive Amazon of business leverage over content distribution.

Barnes & Noble had a brief moment of glory when their first Nook color tablet was cheaper, better and unlocked. Devs were selling rooted Android SD cards on eBay. If BN had opened up the hardware, they had a chance of gaining the scale needed to compete with Kindle. Instead, BN went the other way, locked down Nooks, created their own App Store with poor selection and the rest is history.

Apple has managed to charge premium prices for devices (enabling a market for many cheaper competitors) AND keep leverage on app/content distribution.

Digital publishing needs to separate distribution from payment. Convert "pirates" into "free logistics services" and focus on customers connecting more closely with authors. Why can't authors accept elastic (value-based, pay-what-you-want) bitcoin payments?

Post reply on HN