Please, don't buy my book on Amazon

http://pleasedontbuymybookonamazon.com/

by pmtarantino • 13 years ago

81 106 13 years ago

pleasedontbuymybookonamazon.com

wmeredith• 13 years ago

Why is the author's book listed on Amazon if they do not wish it?

nonchalance• 13 years ago

I think the answer is:

You can’t yet order Vernon Downs directly from your local bookstore because the distributor that fills those orders would also have to fill orders to Amazon.

I'm guessing that there are no medium or large distributors that avoid amazon

rtb• 13 years ago

Exactly. I don't understand this article. The author doesn't really explain what Amazon is doing wrong other than an oblique mention of "Amazon’s discounting policies".

How can Amazon sell a book against the publisher's wishes? If true, that's the real story here.

Maybe the intended audience is already familiar with that part.

kiisupai• 13 years ago

On a related subject, Quartz just ran an article on how membership at the American Booksellers Association has "gone up every year for the past four years, from 1,401 in 2009 to 1,567 in 2012".

http://qz.com/127861/its-time-to-kill-the-idea-that-amazon-i...

Amazon seems to be killing its medium-sized competitors more than its smaller ones. But the article does not touch on the subject of publishers.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

Plenty of small bookstores use amazon, by putting their inventory online as "used books". I'd be curious how much revenue from amazon actually supports small bookstores these days.

drharris• 13 years ago

Might as well tell me not to buy your book at all, then.

oh_sigh2• 13 years ago

I'd like to see a reference for this statement: "For many small publishers like Roundabout, Amazon accounts for a large portion of sales, but the publisher realizes very little of the purchase price owing to Amazon’s discounting policies."

I was under the impression that amazon could discount a book as much as they wanted, but this did not affect the fixed dollar amount that the publisher received per sale.

retube• 13 years ago

Yeah right. Presumably the publisher can sell the book to Amazon for whatever it wants. I guess tho that Amazon say - "we wont stock your book unless you let us have it for some price OR some specified (low) commission."

polarix2• 13 years ago

Seems like that'd solve the problem in this case better than having some nonsensical webpage pleading with customers to be inefficient.

oh_sigh2• 13 years ago

Great reference you provided.

viraptor• 13 years ago

but the publisher realizes very little of the purchase price owing to Amazon’s discounting policies.

And yet, I can't find any way to download his book as an ebook right now. I would love to buy from authors directly... but help me help you. You can also save lots on the production and distribution costs.

scrabble• 13 years ago

The authors concerns seemed more around making sure his publisher was paid than it was making sure he was paid.

Otherwise, I agree. It would be great if more publishers offered up eBooks directly from them. Even at a highly discounted price, they'd make more per sale than through other channels. (But if it was their only distribution channel, likely less overall.)

eddieroger• 13 years ago

I actually think his main point was to save a bookseller, and not the publisher or himself - except, he owns the bookstore in this case, so it comes full circle, supporting his position to buy a physical book from not-Amazon.

JackFr3• 13 years ago

This argument makes no sense.

Small presses fail because they generate the bulk of their sales from Amazon, but the margins are too thin when they sell on Amazon. Presumably if they don't sell on Amazon the margins would be healthier, but sales would drop precipitously. So if you can't make money with Amazon and you can't make money without Amazon it seems to me Amazon isn't the problem.

It's true Amazon took the fat margins, but it gave them to consumers. I suppose this guy is just asking nicely to get them back to support his sclerotic business model. But in the long run it's unlikely that people are going to pay more for a worse product.

(On the other hand maybe he could sell the book at the locally-grown organic farm stand.)

dkrich3• 13 years ago

I think it makes sense, but is simply unrealistic. Like when community members protest the opening of a Wal-Mart, pleading with people to support small businesses that provide fewer choices for more money. Then the Wal-Mart opens and everyone is actually happier. Well at least they must be, because they start shopping at Wal-Mart all the time.

user248• 13 years ago

Then the Wal-Mart opens and everyone is actually happier.

Yes, they shop at Wal-Mart, and it's much more convenient for them.

Then a couple of years later they wonder where all the local businesses went, why all the towns look the same, why there are fewer jobs.

It's naive to think that stopping the odd Wal-Mart or Amazon here and there will help, but it's also naive to think that just because a company is popular that it is doing good on a grander scale.

mtraven• 13 years ago

http://www.web.ca/~tslee/ No One Makes You Shop at Wal-Mart, by Tom Slee

...shows why individual choice fails to give us what we want, and why we need to rely on collective action rather than individual choice to take us to where we want to be.

Don't buy it on Amazon...

EGreg6• 13 years ago

Yeah except now the average wage in the town drops, because all those businesses closed and people had to either a) move or b) work for the Wal-Mart.

"Always lower prices. Always." Yepand lower wages too. The town's inhabitants are also the consumers, so basically the end result is cheaper products AND smaller wages for everyone - and greater income disparity across the country (automation helps boost capital vs labor).

dsr_• 13 years ago

Amazon isn't the whole problem, it's just that Amazon was the winner.

It used to be that most towns had a bookstore, and larger towns or cities had several. Eventually they were displaced by chains: Waldenbooks and B. Dalton, Borders and Barnes & Noble. First the chains chased out the independent bookstores by being able to cut costs and order more efficiently; then the chains ate each other at the same time that Amazon was cutting costs even further. Now there's one limping chain, B&N, and some specialized chains -- mostly religious, secondhand or otherwise discount -- and Amazon.

Efficiency is best served by a single distribution system with maximum economies of scale. That isn't actually a desirable outcome for customers or producers, though.

Spooky232• 13 years ago

I think the key thing is that efficiency isn't the same as a free market, but people tend to equate the two things. It's a rectangle/square problem: free markets drive efficiency, but efficiency doesn't drive free markets.

When an efficient competitor "wins" and drives the competition out of business, everyone loses, as that competitor eventually turns into an entrenched toll-taker. As a consumer, you want your vendors fighting each other all of the time. The situation in books, where Amazon tolerates the existence of B&N, and doesn't give a hoot about Jesus books isn't good for anyone.

polarix2• 13 years ago

Why is this not a desirable outcome for customers?

Touche• 13 years ago

Now there's one limping chain, B&N, and some specialized chains -- mostly religious, secondhand or otherwise discount -- and Amazon.

That's not true, there are many online book sellers out there, and I'm guessing not all of them are in danger of going out of business. Amazon is the biggest player, but what has played out is that book selling is too low-margin to be viable as a meat-space transaction.

forwardbiased• 13 years ago

It doesn't have to make sense. It's social media driven viral marketing.

robmclarty• 13 years ago

I agree. I'm not a published writer, but it seems to me that the expense of selling books printed on trees might be the problem? In my naive way of thinking about it, I feel like the author should just cut out the middle-man (publisher) altogether, put together an ebook (with some kind of free tool like latex, or html, or what-have-you) and then press the "publish" button which either places it on stores like Amazon, or simply sells directly off the author's own site. This is almost zero production cost and all margin.

I'm an avid reader, and have all the walls of my apartment plastered with shelves of dead tree shavings, but I've noticed lately (like maybe within the last 3-5 years since the kindle and tablets have come out) that I don't buy physical books anymore; the reading experience on an electronic devices is sufficient, and the lower price of an ebook is attractive.

With the amount of books I buy, I'm ok with trading a little bit of nostalgia and ephemeral tactility for "2 books for the price of 1". Putting words into my head is the main thing, and authors can put words into people's heads (and make a profit) on their own now: 1. write a book, 2. convert to ebook format and make available online, 3. sprinkle with marketing voodoo (which I think any book author could do: blog, tweet, email, link to book, etc.)

the_watcher5• 13 years ago

This seems to be the real forward. The old distribution model for books has changed forever. While it makes it much harder for traditional independent publishers to print physical books, the barrier to entry as a publisher has been reduced so much that it really represents a step change in the industry. Anyone can publish an ebook, or release Kindle singles as a marketing strategy (or to create new forms of books closer to the old serials that Dickens and the like wrote). Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferris, Tucker Max, Ryan Holiday (just the people I know off the top of my head) have written extensively about how they have self-published their way to best seller lists. Asking people to pay you to keep your outdated business model working doesn't strike me as the best plan.

yesplorer2• 13 years ago

it is the way you've explained it that presents his effort as making no sense.

Yes, if they don't sell on Amazon they will loose huge amount of sales because the Amazon exposure will be lost.

But in this case he's trying to avoid selling on Amazon while simultaneously making effort that he maintains the exposure by using other avenues (like how he got it on top of HN frontpage). That is not the same as someone who decides he wouldn't sell on Amazon and miraculously expects to get some exposure somehow.

EGreg6• 13 years ago

If his publisher didn't want to sell on Amazon, can't they just take it off?

codex• 13 years ago

Small presses would make money if Amazon didn't exist. So really, this is a plea to put Amazon out of business, or at least get them to use their almost-monopoly power over book prices to give a little more margin back to the small guys.

joelgrus• 13 years ago

"Amazon's discounting policies" are the same as every other bookstore, they pay the publisher ~45% of the cover price for each book. Generally speaking, the publisher gets the same $$ whether you buy the book from Amazon or from Quirky-Bookstore-Full-of-Cats or from wherever.

If you buy directly from the publisher, then the publisher does get 100% of the price. And if they donate 50% of that to your local bookstore, they're still making more money than if you'd bought the book from that local bookstore. None of this has anything to do with Amazon.

I get that Amazon is bad for small independent bookstores (and for large chain bookstores too!), and I notice that the author just happens to own a small independent bookstore, so take his other complaints with a large grain of salt.

xauronx• 13 years ago

"and I notice that the author just happens to own a small independent bookstore"

This should probably be the top comment.

josefresco• 13 years ago

From the post:

"co-owner of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston"

austinstorm• 13 years ago

Yeah, this is really confusing. Small bookstores would typically get this book through a distributor like Ingram, which might take a similar or higher percentage than Amazon. This is just a misguided publicity stunt based on misinformation.

Shivetya2• 13 years ago

buy my book, oh you haven't heard of it, let me put Amazon in the url and then make up some wonderfully confused reason why buying it there was wrong, but you still must buy it.

really? this comes off more like, here's my book, you haven't heard of it, but if I say something bad about Amazon I have an excuse to tell you of it.

If small publishers don't want to sell their books through Amazon then stay out of the channels where Amazon buys books. How is that not possible?

webjprgm• 13 years ago

He said the distributor that ships books to local bookstores would also have to ship them to Amazon. So he can't both stay out of Amazon's channel and be in the local bookseller's channel. Presumably he wants his book in local bookstores.

capisce2• 13 years ago

I tried to buy it but it didn't look like you could preorder an e-book

davexunit• 13 years ago

Don't buy any books from Amazon.

http://www.stallman.org/amazon.html

kamjam2• 13 years ago

Some of the least convincing arguments I've read for not buying from Amazon, most of those could apply to any large corporate.

End of the day, mass consumers look at the bottom line, in this case cheap prices and good service.

mcv• 13 years ago

For many small publishers like Roundabout, Amazon accounts for a large portion of sales, but the publisher realizes very little of the purchase price owing to Amazon’s discounting policies.

This I don't understand. How is it possible that Amazon's discounts reduce the publisher's margin? Doesn't the publisher simply sell it to Amazon for what the publisher thinks is a fair wholesale price? Amazon can screw small bookstores by reducing their own margins to almost nothing, but surely they can't reduce the publisher's margins? If Amazon wants to pay less for the book, then surely the publisher can simply not sell through Amazon?

So what use is it to tell people not to buy from Amazon? Maybe I just don't get how the book industry works.

blumkvist• 13 years ago

saw this brought up by another member. Can anyone clarify please?

seszett• 13 years ago

I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with books or Amazon but CSS, and this website is a good example.

CSS transitions are a great feature, however, using them to make hyperlinks fade slowly over 500ms on hover is a really bad idea.

It is both distracting and not helpful, as a casual pass over a link with the mouse won't actually reveal it.

So please, please, by all means use CSS transitions for nice graphic effects, or to make the colour transition smoother over 50, or 100ms, but too much is not better.

I have the feeling CSS transitions are quickly becoming a kind of modern standard of amateur design, discreet and appealing yet annoying and distracting, like coloured scrollbars and animated mouse cursors once were.

wil421• 13 years ago

Amateur dev/designer here.

Agreed that CSS transitions are neat and easy to use but you are right about the hyperlinks being a bad place to use them. If the link in the page wasn't the URL and instead just a word in the paragraphs I wouldn't have noticed it either. When I use transitions for links or to open sub menus I usually pick a color that really stands out so they can understand they should click there. Usually 100ms will do fine, I think the transitions have their place but some people including my Manager do not like them for links or menus.

teh_klev• 13 years ago

I wish folks would just make links look like links - blue underlined text that turns purple if visited, just like the good old days - instead of making me scan through the text with my mouse just in case I miss something.

yoshokatana• 13 years ago

CSS transitions need to be a lot more subtle than they usually are. I've seen a few good examples (Medium comes to mind), but most sites that use them implement them very garishly.

For links, I've found that a 150ms intro animation and a 250ms outro (with the proper easing) is the maximum duration that looks good.

wildermuthn• 13 years ago

If enough people bought the book (i.e., were interested in reading the book), money wouldn't be a problem.

cyberpanther• 13 years ago

Offer a DRM free ebook for download if you want to sell it yourself. Then let your readers know, Google Play Books lets you upload e-books to any device you have. Amazon Kindle has many restrictions when uploading books. This is how I always buy my books if I can because it gives me more freedom and I'm not locked into any eco-system.

jstalin• 13 years ago

I buy almost all my books used on Amazon now, supporting local booksellers and getting them for much cheaper than retail price. Sorry, but this plea to not use Amazon is falling on deaf ears. I'm sorry that your business model doesn't work. Amazon's does.

yesplorer2• 13 years ago

Amazon's business model doesn't really work either. They just have enough runway to make sure that everyone gets out of the market then theirs will start making sense.

the_watcher5• 13 years ago

Amazon's business model could start working essentially overnight if they moved out of land grab mode into monetization mode. Increase the price of Kindle books by 10% across the board, increase the Prime subscription rate (or tier out Prime levels), and increase their fees for fulfillment and transaction processing. You are correct that their runway lets them operate in perpetual land grab (as well as allowed them to get to the point that they could increase all these prices and not lose all their customers), but that doesn't mean if Wall Street started seriously complaining they wouldn't be able to massively increase profits.

triplesec• 13 years ago

This post is lacking any supporting data regarding how amazon, other online stores, retail chains, and independent booksellers' agreements are different, and why amazon is particulary bad. As such, it's not really all that compelling as a rhetoric.

kostyk• 13 years ago

I am not sure if everybody aware, but Amazon is actually losing money and bleeding cash. http://seekingalpha.com/article/1712392-how-ugly-will-amazon...

astrodust• 13 years ago

It's not like anyone's expecting Amazon to make mountains of cash. It's not bleeding, either, it's re-investing, just like it always has.

Since the very beginning.

Stop screaming about the sky falling. It's just rain.

saosebastiao• 13 years ago

Not realizing profits and bleeding cash are two completely separate concepts.

dabernathy89• 13 years ago

There is a relevant piece over at Techcrunch this morning; it argues that it was Borders/B&N that hurt indie bookstores, not Amazon:

"Indie Bookstores Aren’t Dead Yet"

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/indie-bookstores-arent-dead...

TBInman2• 13 years ago

Interesting. The end of the NetBook Agreement in the UK (1995) which opened up the era of chain book stores and the discount supermarket book has definitely had a massive, often overlooked impact. The book industry don't like or get Amazon and that's why they grumble about it so much. But there are so many other reasons as to why it's changing so rapidly.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

I stopped reading at "As a bookstore owner"

spongle6• 13 years ago

So I should keep funding my local bookshop which I have to walk to, has no titles other than the paperback chart full of trash like fifty shades, takes weeks to get an order in (which I have to go and collect) and costs more?

I should also keep funding my publisher which does it's best to top slice cash, screws libraries with license agreements for texts, force DRM where possible?

I think people resent amazon in this market because it's stamped on their little castles they all built. That's business, regardless of what you sell or create.

jhspaybar• 13 years ago

Why I Buy All My Books On Amazon

* They have it, always(and the newest printing of it)

* They usually have it digital, I start reading it within 60 seconds

* If it's not digital it is often available used($200 textbooks for $5? Yes, please, my "local" bookstore can keep their copies at $150 used).

* Prime shipping

* Oh, I also need new batteries, and a box of diapers? Might as well throw those in to the order and get back to things I would rather be doing than driving through town wasting my time.

makomk• 13 years ago

"They have it, always(and the newest printing of it)"

The trouble is, Amazon knows that consumers think this way - so whenever they want to extort publishers into giving them a bigger discount they just make all that publishers' books unavailable on Amazon, knowing that everyone will just assume the books are out of print and not bother looking elsewhere.

ISL• 13 years ago

If there's another Amazon-efficient middleman that offers superior rates to publishers/manufacturers at equal price/service to consumers, Amazon is as dead as Books-A-Million.

Amazon's retail key is its unmatched distribution network. If someone can duplicate it, they'll eventually have half of the market.

Tichy• 13 years ago

So they can't stop Amazon from selling the book?

If they really want to make a good cut, they should sell the ebook on their own web site.

R_Edward• 13 years ago

Done. I will not buy your book on Amazon. Glad to help.

cjoh• 13 years ago

Left out of this argument is that The New York Times bestseller list has a bias towards physical retailers and against Amazon. Methinks this is a smart strategy towards getting on the bestseller list (which means enhanced speaker fees), disguised as a strategy towards justice in retail.

fusiongyro• 13 years ago

The plea to support my struggling local bookstore would be more efficacious if I had one. As it happens my only real options are to order through Amazon or take a 75 mile drive to pay more for the book in person at Barnes and Noble.

Uchikoma• 13 years ago

Except I'll pay another 63% for p&p.

ig1• 13 years ago

The reason that small hard/paperback publishers are dying isn't Amazon. The reason is that physical book sales are dying, ebooks have overtaken both hardbacks and paperbacks in both total sales and revenues. Next year they'll probably be the majority of the market, within a decade physical books will be quaint.

Starting a physical book publisher in this day and age is like trying to start a radio rental business in the 80s. Your business is going to be screwed by market trends whatever you do.

laughfactory• 13 years ago

Yeah, I'm a Kindle convert and don't read books on paper much these days... And Amazon makes it ultra efficient for me to purchase, download, and read books that way. Sorry small independent booksellers, but your time has come: you're selling vinyl LPs in the age of iTunes.

TBInman2• 13 years ago

Yes, and it's undeniably nice to be able to buy books and CDs at what are effectively wholesale prices. I'm less convinced that kindle and e-ink e-readers in general are the future. Trends suggest that more and more people are reading on tablet, as opposed to specialist reading devices, the usage of which has plateaued. And I would definitely worry about what will happen to books should the day come when they are primarily read on a platform on which they must compete with other, noisier content (I'm looking at you, Angry Birds).

EGreg6• 13 years ago

It sounds like instead of the author making this plea, the publisher should just withhold the books from Amazon. After all, isn't copyright still in effect in this country?

methodin• 13 years ago

So why don't presses offer a widget for people to buy directly from the author's site, such as this?

clarky07• 13 years ago

I recently self-published a book and I have a different gripe with Amazon. I didn't realize (I'm sure most wouldn't know) that Amazon is basically forcing people to price ebooks at 9.99. At prices < $10, Amazon gives 70%. At prices > $10, Amazon gives 35%.

I had planned to initially offer my book at $9.99, and then raise the price to $14.99. Unfortunately, I'd basically have to stop offering Amazon as a vendor, or at the very least stop advertising it as one on my site. I may or may not do that at some point, but it's frustrating to say the least that I don't have control of the pricing of my product. I'm not willing to charge my customers more and receive less.

Shameless plug for my book - http://buildanappbusiness.com/

svantana2• 13 years ago

How is this argument any different from "please don't buy my books at a used book shop"? Apart from the fact that everyone loves used book shops, so that would look bad...

Please, don't buy my book on Amazon

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