Is anybody boycotting Amazon?

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Is anybody boycotting Amazon?

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1Cancellato
Giu 14, 2014, 11:49 am

By now, I'm assuming everyone has heard about the Amazon/Hachette flap, which affects women (and other) authors and publishers. (It's been on the Colbert Report, for heaven's sakes.) Calls for boycotting Amazon have come from some authors and readers. (Brief squib about this in Barron's, which shows Barnes & Noble is making some hay off the controversy: http://blogs.barrons.com/stockstowatchtoday/2014/06/12/who-wins-the-amazon-hache....

So anybody boycotting Amazon?

2Settings
Giu 14, 2014, 12:36 pm

All of the articles I've read about this (few), have actually painted Hatchett as in the wrong.

For example, here-
http://www.hughhowey.com/big-publishing-is-the-problem/

Where is the article I just posted mistaken and why should we boycott Amazon over this specifically? (I am seriously asking.)

3Cancellato
Giu 14, 2014, 12:47 pm

>2 Settings: I'm not sure (which is why I'm asking, too)! Most of the reports I've heard criticizes Amazon for being greedy, a retailer with so much power that it undercuts profits for publishers (and, presumably, authors). But is this David-and-Goliath treatment of the issue a true representation?

I think your article raises that question!

4southernbooklady
Giu 14, 2014, 1:16 pm

There's more information about the dispute in this discussion:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/174649

Publishers were judged to be "in the wrong" in the original lawsuit that has led to the negotiations with Hachette -- the first of the six publishers involved to have their negotiation period come up. The process will repeat itself with Bertelsmann, etc.

The outrage against Amazon has to do with their negotiating tactics, which effectively penalize their customers by making Hachette books unavailable. It's very very bizarre for them--Amazon has thrived on being the champion of the customer. This strategy throws that priority out the door.

5LyzzyBee
Giu 14, 2014, 1:55 pm

I've been boycotting Amazon for a while now, because they don't pay their appropriate taxes in the UK, and I run a small business and pay my taxes, so that really annoys me. I do sell the books I write on Amazon, because there is no other big platform like that (I sell on other platforms but the volume is not there) but I justify that by not claiming back the tax they take off me at source in America, so effectively I make myself pay a guilt tax for using them (I also do offer other platforms and other formats for other ereaders). So it's complicated for me, but I've been boycotting buying from them for a while.

6Cancellato
Giu 14, 2014, 2:42 pm

>4 southernbooklady: Thanks for the link to that thread. I didn't know about that group.

I like what you posted there, and hope you won't mind if I add it here?

My mother, who takes the (very) long view on such things, thinks that all big companies have a life cycles and that at some point they go from being an innovator that embraces change to something more like a behemoth, which resists it. When that happens they lose their claim on the future, so to speak. (Her favorite illustrative example being IBM).

>5 LyzzyBee: It was my understanding (maybe works differently in the UK) that authors don't really have a choice about whether to sell through Amazon. Their publisher cuts that deal.

The magazine I contribute to occasionally sells my articles on Amazon for $9.95. I don't know what the magazine earns on these sales (I doubt monographs are brisk sellers) but I'm paid up front, and get no royalties whatever.

7johnsimpson
Giu 14, 2014, 3:59 pm

I have to say that I despise Amazon along with two other businesses and class them as the modern day Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I will do without rather than have to use Amazon, initially Amazon seemed like a good idea but now Bezos is getting beyond himself and the company is like the Hydra now.

8Cancellato
Giu 14, 2014, 4:16 pm

>7 johnsimpson: Now I'm dying to know the other two.

9Yells
Giu 14, 2014, 5:32 pm

Walmart has got to be one.

10LyzzyBee
Giu 14, 2014, 5:44 pm

>6 nohrt4me2: sorry, I'm an indie publisher so I go down the DIY route and get to choose the platforms on which I publish, except I don't, because I wouldn't sell much if I didn't sell on there. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. I price my books carefully so that I get more royalty than Amazon on the main ones, while keeping the price as low as possible, so they profit from me as little as I can make them (there's a price above which I get 70% and Amazon the rest, which swaps around when you go below that price).

11johnsimpson
Giu 15, 2014, 7:16 am

>8 nohrt4me2:, >9 Yells:, if I lived in the US it would probably be Walmart but it is Apple and Tesco and then by association with Tesco the other UK supermarkets of which Asda is Walmart owned. Between them all they have destroyed independent book shops and music shops and defaced the High Streets up and down the UK.

12Cancellato
Giu 15, 2014, 12:38 pm

>11 johnsimpson: I live in the U.S., and Apple's on my list, mostly because of the overhyped, overpriced products, the glass screens of which are prone to shattering. My kid's girlfriend put his iPod in her back pocket whilst traveling through Germany. She forgot it was there, sat down for a schnitzel, and auf wiedersehen, Herr iPodd.

13SaraHope
Modificato: Lug 18, 2014, 5:57 pm

I generally don't purchase books from Amazon ever anyway, but, well, I work in publishing (not for Hachette). I think for me what I try to keep in mind is that Hachette is a company. Amazon is a company. They will both act in ways that they believe will further their interests.

BUT Amazon has a disproportionate market share of both physical and particularly ebook sales, not just for Hachette, but industry-wide, and that raises a lot of questions and a lot of fear . . . because when you control most of the sales, you've got a lot of leverage to control all the terms. Consider the case of, say, Walmart, which is often in a similar position--historically, Walmart has become such an important customer to many of its suppliers that it has almost unilateral ability to dictate terms by saying "well, if you don't give us the price (size, quantity, etc.) we want, we'll just stop buying from you." Many business can't afford to take a stand against that threat:

http://www.fastcompany.com/47593/wal-mart-you-dont-know

Publishers fear that, eventually, the same may be true of us. And unlike Amazon, which often sells books at a loss to drive traffic to their website, publishers don't get to make up for lost revenue by selling microwaves.

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