Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/05/amazon-malignant-monopoly-or-j.html

by cstross • 12 years ago

131 163 12 years ago

facepalm4• 12 years ago

And Amazon is interested in driving Charlie Stross out of business because?

By the logic of the article everybody who negotiates a price is evil because they want to drive the other party out of business by aiming for lower and lower prices.

stcredzero3• 12 years ago

Such tendencies are fine in your typical market. Monopolies make it a problem.

facepalm4• 12 years ago

Even if Amazon was a monopoly it would still need authors to create books.

cjy• 12 years ago

Actually, a monopoly should remove problems like these. If Amazon is the only firm, it will bear all the costs if fewer good books come out in the future. Therefore, it has an incentive to create an ecosystem that maximizes it's long term profit.

For example, think about fishing. If there are lots of fishing boats they will tend to overfish. They can't leave fish in the ocean to reproduce because other boats will catch them. If there is just one boat (or all boats are owned by the same company) it will take out the optimal number of fish so that the fishery remains healthy and pays the highest dividends in the future.

mattchew• 12 years ago

I don't think Amazon is a monopoly in the sense of controlling the market. They're certainly the dominant player, but it's easy enough to buy an ebook from somewhere else.

I do not see how Amazon starts squeezing authors hard without losing them to somewhere else.

res0nat0r6• 12 years ago

Fortunately amazon isn't a monopoly. They are just popular.

stcredzero3• 12 years ago

monopsony

It's always a good sign when an article expands one's vocabulary. (Yes, look it up!)

rahimnathwani• 12 years ago

The first example of a monopsony I was taught at school was that of the market for teachers if all schools are run by the state. Then teachers can only be employed by the state (if they want to remain teachers).

icebraining7• 12 years ago

if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse.

Is this claim backed up by any actual evidence? Does Amazon pressure self-published authors the same way they pressure publishers?

danmaz74• 12 years ago

Isn't there a cause where you get MUCH better conditions if you price your ebook under $10?

icebraining7• 12 years ago

I don't know, that's why I'm asking. Is there?

michaelt2• 12 years ago

Even if Amazon doesn't pressure self-publishers on price today, a career writer has to think about where the market will be 10 or 15 years from now.

The claim is not that Amazon is pressuring self-publishing authors today - it's that they could start in the future, as an ebook monopoly would give them have the means, motive and opportunity.

icebraining7• 12 years ago

Amazon will never be a true monopoly, because shipping ebooks has no real barriers. There's no way that writers will be unable to sell their works elsewhere, and as Stross himself writes, novels are not commodities that can be undercut by another producer.

The only authors that have to fear that future are those that produce works uninteresting enough that people won't look for them outside of the Amazon store.

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

It is ironic that all of Charlie's books that I have bought have been on Kindle.

That said, I basically agree with the premise of this article. When the price is comparable I prefer buying eBooks from publishers, with an advantage of getting multiple formats. Yesterday I bought one book on Kindle and another directly from the publisher. The book I bought on Kindle was unfortunately much cheaper from Amazon than the publisher's direct price.

edanm• 12 years ago

Great article, and I love getting an update on one of the more influential articles I've read about Amazon that has stuck with me over the years.

But I'm left with a question - is Amazon stupid? They rely on new works coming out just as much as authors and publishers. Why are they acting in a way that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term? It looks like a losing strategy for them.

tormeh• 12 years ago

Writing is like music: Someone will always do it, even if it doesn't pay. You can take the author's money and he'll still write. Being passionate about your job (which most artists are) in a market with abundant supply (which art has) means you are a career sucker. While art is not fungible in the sense that a free market would drive the margins to zero, a monopolist could still twist artists pretty bad before a significant portion of them stop writing.

pizza234• 12 years ago

Yes and no; exactly like music, and say, cinema, artists will still produce without money, but quantity and quality will become mutually exclusive.

In the article Stross says that "after a while, there will be no more Charlie Stross novels because I will be unable to earn a living and will have to go find a paying job".

WalterBright7• 12 years ago

My father wrote and had published a couple of books (obscure historical topics). He spent years writing them. He didn't care about making money off of them, he wrote them to establish his professional reputation. He's happy that people read them and cite them.

Turing_Machine19• 12 years ago

"Why are they acting in a way that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term?"

Paying authors 70% rather than 15% is going to "drive them off"?

Okay.

Anderkent9• 12 years ago

Why would amazon pay authors 70% if there's no other publisher around? They do it for now to undermine the traditional publishing model. If that's gone, expect it to go down.

Anderkent9• 12 years ago

No, amazon is a 60B company fighting with a 2B company. It's a loss leader - they might earn less than they could this year, but eventually Hatchette will give up and accept amazon's terms (it's not like they really have a choice) or go out of digital distrubition, and any other publishers will see that there's no alternative.

At that point amazon is free to dictate terms to any publishers (perhaps with the exception of larger ones that could plausibly bootstrap their own retail channels if forced to) and earn their loss back.

icebraining7• 12 years ago

Why can only "larger" publishers retail their own ebooks? Is this the 1980s again? I see new small businesses and even individuals retailing their own works every day, why is it so hard for them?

avoutthere• 12 years ago

Amazon is a great American success story that has improved the lives of many around the world. Only those of a particular political persuasion would characterize them as evil.

juniorcopywrt• 12 years ago

Ugh more whining from Stross. What a headline: Betteridge's Law and "Amazon, have you stopped beating your wife yet?" combined in one.

Amazon's negotiating tactics are not unique and don't make them evil. B&N pulled the same tricks when negotiating with Simon & Schuster last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-schus... It's a common incident in the television industry as well. Time Warner dropped CBS last year while negotiating a fee dispute: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-cbs-...

It doesn't matter that one party is in a stronger negotiating position than the other. That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game.

p.s. The DOJ anti-trust lawyers never had a focus on preventing monopolies before the '80s. Their focus has always been on the prevention of the abuse of market power whether by monopolists or oligopolies. If Amazon should be targeted for having an ebook monopoly then Apple would have been on the hitlist first for having a digital music monopoly that they managed for half a decade before the Kindle.

Anderkent9• 12 years ago

That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game

Well, yes, the point is that the game is broken.

gress2• 12 years ago

That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game.

Try some other words in there and see how you feel:

"That's fascism; don't hate the player, hate the game."

At least it's clear that you wish to resolve corporations from responsibility for what they do.

pja7• 12 years ago

absolve?

ilamont• 12 years ago

One issue I seldom see mentioned in articles about ebook monopolies is how Apple -- which has many of the pieces in place to be a strong competitor -- has really dropped the ball.

When I first began testing different ebook formats a few years ago, not only was the iPad hardware superior to the Kindles and Nook, the ePub reading experience in iBooks was vastly better than the same ePub on the Nook or the .mobi equivalent in the Kindles.

Where Apple failed was in the purchasing experience (the iBookstore/iTunes mess) and some of the back-end tools for publishing. Other than updating the iTunes Producer interface for submitting new titles, and improving iBooks Author for Apple-only rich media ebooks, I haven't seen any significant improvements for readers or publishers who want to use the Apple platform over the past two years. Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire has brought Amazon customers a slick alternative to the iPad at a much lower price point.

I don't like having an Amazon monopoly, but some of the blame should be assigned to the erstwhile competitors who can't seem to get it together.

BugBrother2• 12 years ago

It has been argued for years that network services is a weak spot for Apple (maps, network drives, etc). They hopefully will do better in the future.

Personally, as a happy Amazon customer, one aspect is funny. I get insight into how satisfied Microsoft users must have felt in the 90s when the monopolistic criminality became widely known. :-)

Edit: Any suggested alternative stores, which deliver paper books all over EU? (Sigh, I am happy with Amazon.)

tramtaram• 12 years ago

http://www.bookdepository.com is quite good. Might not be the cheapest though.

blinkingled2• 12 years ago

Are Apple iBooks cross platform? I could live with Amazon Kindle ebooks even if they are evil with the publishers but it Apple wants to tie me to their ecosystem without a way to exit then that's an evil that affects me more directly. And if we are talking about dropping the ball lack of cross platform availability is as big a ball they could drop.

pooper2• 12 years ago

Perhaps in a few years we will have a "Thoughts on books" similar to the "Thoughts on music". In my opinion, if the iBooks experience is really good, people who love Apple will continue to use iBooks even without the shackles of DRM.

I think Apple can afford to sell books without DRM and will do so if publishers allow them. I don't think Amazon.com and Apple are evil. It is the publishers who increasingly find themselves less useful and are willing to sacrifice usability for the sake of temporary relevance.

Turing_Machine19• 12 years ago

"they supply editorial, production, packaging, marketing, accounting, and sales services and pay me a percentage of the revenue....I could do this myself, and self-publish, but I don't want to be a publisher, I want to be a writer: we have this thing called "the division of labour""

You can hire that done for a flat rate, without giving up 85% of your money in perpetuity.

"will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms."

What are these "extremely onerous terms"?

There aren't any. They will pay you 70% of retail, on time, every month. No exclusive contracts. No Byzantine "royalty statements". Their accounting is quite clear. No signing over your copyrights forever.

"if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse"

This, of course, is pure nonsense.

It may eventually come about that Amazon starts abusing authors, but that's certainly not the case now.

Turing_Machine19• 12 years ago

P.S. "rely on DRM on the walled garden of the Kindle store to lock consumers onto their platform,"

This is also nonsense. If your Kindle books are DRMed it's because your publisher insists on it. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. Amazon doesn't actually care if you add DRM or not.

rubinelli3• 12 years ago

How do you tell if a Kindle book has DRM or not? I searched all over the product pages and couldn't find it anywhere.

anon13854• 12 years ago

What are these "extremely onerous terms"? There aren't any. They will pay you 70% of retail, on time, every month.

No they won't.

70% royalties is only available if you sell your book for less than $9.99, otherwise it drops to 35%: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0

That's what you might call an "onerous term".

Turing_Machine19• 12 years ago

Stross is almost certainly getting 15% or less from his publisher, so no, 35% isn't an "onerous term".

The Kindle editions of virtually all of Stross's books are less than $9.99 anyway, so this doesn't even apply.

judk• 12 years ago

It depends of you look at it as a "bonus" for low-priced books (to drive volume fornimpulse purchases), or a penalty for high priced books.

35% seems higher than competiting publishers with major marketing power.

pja7• 12 years ago

Note also that Amazon charges ordinary authors an onerous per kb delivery charge under the 70% royalty option. You get to pay the charge whether the Kindle owner buys the book over 3G or Wifi, even though Amazon only incurs the costs when delivering 3G data.

The contract is also full of delightful potential gotchas like Amazon demanding worldwide distribution rights at exchange rates set by them, without reference to any externally defined rates.

The whole thing is incredibly biased in favour of Amazon over the author. This should be absolutely no surprise whatsoever given Amazon's history: At one point, they were charging EU authors their local VAT rate, whilst only paying 3% VAT in Luxembourg: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/21/amazon-for... (they may have given up on this particular piece of blatant gouging, but I'm sure they're trying to make up for it elsewhere).

res0nat0r6• 12 years ago

Shouldn't the word onerous be replaced with something like, "not great"? No one is forcing anyone to publish their books via amazon. If you don't like it, don't do business with them.

logn• 12 years ago

I am guessing that not getting an advance, having to hire people, and having to pay people prior to revenue is a difficult transition.

If the music industry is any guide, the writers will adapt. And if the software industry is any guide, then we do need an Amazon competitor.

pja7• 12 years ago

What are these "extremely onerous terms"?

There aren't any. They will pay you 70% of retail, on time, every month.

"Note that if your Digital Book is eligible for the 70% royalty option, your Digital Book will earn 70% on each sale of the Digital Book at a Promotional List Price set under the Kindle MatchBook program regardless of whether the Promotional List Price is within the maximum and minimum list price requirements for the 70% royalty option."

What does that mean? It means that Amazon can set any price they like for your book, right down to $0.00 and as the author you get to eat it - your sole remedy is to withdraw the book from sale with a 5 day delay. Amazon makes an error and misprices your book, resulting in half your expected sales being made at $1 instead of $10? Tough - you get to eat it (and yes, this has happening to authors in the past).

Turing_Machine19• 12 years ago

"What does that mean? It means that Amazon can set any price they like for your book"

It means nothing of the sort. The MatchBook program is a special deal that you have to enroll your book in yourself (it lets people who've purchased your paper book get the ebook at a discount). What it actually means is that if you have voluntarily signed up for MatchBook, you're only going to get 70% of the discounted price, not 70% of the list price.

If you're not signed up for MatchBook this doesn't apply at all.

cstross4• 12 years ago

I'm not "giving up 85% of my money in perpetuity".

Yes, authors get paid a royalty of 6%-25% of the cover price. However, the biggest cut of the cover price goes to the distribution/retail chain. And when I say "biggest" I mean "50-70%".

In general, the publisher spends about the same amount as the author royalties on production and manufacturing overheads. And reaps the same again as their profit share.

Between us my publishers and I typically end up getting 20-30% of the price of each book sold, with another 10% going on production costs. Amazon then take 50-70%. They may choose to pass half their share on to the consumers, but they're still trousering more profit than my publisher and I get, combined.

Turing_Machine19• 12 years ago

" However, the biggest cut of the cover price goes to the distribution/retail chain. And when I say "biggest" I mean "50-70%"."

Unless you put it in KDP, in which case you get 70% and the retail chain gets 30%.

With respect to perpetuity, maybe your contracts are better than most people get but "term of copyright" is quite common.

WalterBright7• 12 years ago

BTW, though I don't agree with many of your points, I appreciate that you're taking the time to post here. Thank you!

vertex-four2• 12 years ago

So, here's something that I want as an occasional reader. I want a service that'll let me buy a different small-ish bundle of e-books of various genres every week/month/whatever, Humble Bundle style. I've had a look for such things, and haven't really found anything which does it properly.

7799862• 12 years ago

So you want a Humble Bundle, but for books? Maybe they could call it the "Humble Book Bundle"! And maybe they could give it a humblebundle.com URL too!

Oh, it already exists...

https://www.humblebundle.com/books

furyofantares• 12 years ago

There is no need to use sarcasm, you can just inform the person you are replying to without trying to belittle them

sp3322• 12 years ago

Thanks, I've bought things from several Humble Bundles but I'd never heard of this one.

vertex-four2• 12 years ago

The Humble Book Bundle has only appeared fairly rarely (maybe that's changed now?), and tends to stick to "geeky" books, unfortunately.

hershel2• 12 years ago

If they fear being left alone against amazon, why don't authors use their union to start directly collectively bargaining, or even starting business activities together ? In a world where a book store is just an app, there are a lot of opportunities open to authors, and they really hold the power in the book market, at least with regards to ebooks.

Anderkent9• 12 years ago

Because they don't want to be publishers, they want to be writers. As said in the article.

hershel2• 12 years ago

They don't have to be publishers. They just vote once in a while, pay their dues , and the union does the rest.

rwmj4• 12 years ago

And what stops Charlie Stross from selling eBooks through his own website and taking PayPal as payment?

moomin4• 12 years ago

His agreement with Hachette, which, as he has explained, he believes to be an agreement in his best interest.

Seriously, has it been so long since Microsoft that people can't recognise straight up abuse of market position anymore?

rwmj4• 12 years ago

At one time you could practically not buy a computer without buying a Microsoft license. It's not as if you can't get internet without being forced to buy everything through Amazon. Anyone can still set up a website.

yardie2• 12 years ago

Yes, it has been that long. Seriously, most 19-20 year olds would have been toddlers (4yo) when the trial started. Even then almost everyone agreed that Internet Explorer was the best browser and the price was right, free.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 12 years ago

From TFA, possibly further down than you read:

"I could do this myself, and self-publish, but I don't want to be a publisher, I want to be a writer: we have this thing called "the division of labour", and it suits me quite well to out-source that side of the job to specialists ... in particular if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with less recourse"

rwmj4• 12 years ago

I read the whole article before commenting. He talks about publishing through Amazon. I'm saying he could cut Amazon out completely.

I think Amazon bring 4 things:

- Audience

- Bandwidth

- A platform for taking payments, refunds and so on

- DRM

Bandwidth is probably not a serious concern, unless he's going to sell upwards of millions of books. The payments can be handled by other platforms easily, eg. PayPal. DRM is likely unnecessary. So it's really audience, and I guess Stross has that already, although other writers probably don't.

wjnc• 12 years ago

The thing that resonates in this story for me, is that these monopsonies mostly harm producers (writers, musicians), not consumers. The monopsonists keep prices quite low and service quite high, compared to monopolists. It really feels like a problem for Stross, but not too generally for mankind (Stross-fans aside).

Troubles on the producer side might force some producers out, but since this is in the creative sphere we cannot really know which Shakespeare we've missed because he "became a banker".

I do feel sorry for Stross the writer that might have to switch publisher, or the artist who gets .002 cents per download, but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value.

Other comments rightly add that in the transition from monopsony to oligopsony (: say Apple enters) producers might be able to retain more value, but then again, these producers still have to deal with the middle men. You have this stacked market here where each party would blame the others for not getting his / her 'appropriate' level of reward:

producer (creative, high-risk endeavor, superstar effects) <--> publishing house (makes market, creates prints, less risky endeavor, but has competition in picking winners) <--> *platform Amazon (delivers product, makes userbase, pays per sale: least risk but low added value per sale)

zcrar70• 12 years ago

but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value.

They won't if there are no more good books to read/music to listen to, because the gains aren't worth the effort that goes into producing them.

I don't think danger is books or music disappearing, but that the quality goes down, as the incentives for authors/musicians/composers to invest significant time and effort producing high quality work are reduced.

This particularly applies to the 'avant-guarde' works which push the envelope creatively/intellectually, but typically don't correlate with high volumes.

epsylon• 12 years ago

It mostly harms the big name producers. There are plenty of niche writers and small-time musicians who are super happy to be published on Amazon and iTunes.

vosper2• 12 years ago

There's a particularly good link to an insightful counter-argument from another author way down in the comments: http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hache...

moomin4• 12 years ago

I note that even after he includes other media in the size of these behemoths, the numbers he's quoting are factors of 5 or 6 smaller than Amazon (a number notably missing from his analysis)

Yes, on many occasions these guys would be the scariest 12-year old in the playground. But this time they're getting picked on by Mike Tyson.

vosper2• 12 years ago

You're right that he doesn't mention that Amazon's revenues dwarf the publishers' revenues, though this [1] Guardian article suggests that Amazon's book revenues may be as low as 7% of the revenue figure that Stross cited.

At any rate, the most interesting points in the blog post were that firstly it's not clear that Hachette aren't playing some shenanigans of their own with delivery times, and secondly that there's this whole background of court-ordered deal renegotiation that Stross didn't mention.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-esc...

jstalin• 12 years ago

Conversely, I've been able to publish through Amazon's on-demand imprint, CreateSpace, books that I would have no way of publishing otherwise. I make a few hundred bucks a month and have fun with self-publishing. The Kindle editions also earn 70% royalties. I make some money, so does Amazon, and those who buy the books get what they want. Everyone wins.

spir• 12 years ago

Let us not fall into the peasant trap of calling a website, which you need never visit, that sells commodities, which you need never purchase, a monopoly.

Amazon's strategy is price, convenience and selection. It has been since at least the famous 1997 letter to shareholders.

(Of course, Kindle isn't a monopoly either. None of the pricing is predatory - ie temporarily selling at a loss for anticompetitive purposes. It's razor and blades.)

First World Problems at its finest. "Those fucking starbucks guys have a MONOPOLY on good coffee!!" Suck it up or use widely-available inferior products and services.

Anderkent9• 12 years ago

You're looking at it from the point of a customer. Sure, if you want to buy a book you could use a different retailer, they probably have the book too.

From the point of the producer, if you're not on amazon, you're not reaching 80% of your audience. You don't have a choice.

WalterBright7• 12 years ago

I've bought ebooks from people's own web sites that were not available from Amazon. They did their own promotion, such as posting reddit articles about their books. They reached a worldwide audience, and (presumably) kept 100% of the sales revenue.

nitrogen2• 12 years ago

None of the pricing is predatory - ie temporarily selling at a loss...

Actually, this does happen from time to time when Amazon decides to promote a book for free and still pays list price royalties.

armenarmen• 12 years ago

According to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act: "A market share greater than 75 percent indicates monopoly power, a share less than 50 percent does not, and shares between 50 and 75 percent are inconclusive in and of themselves." http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Sherman+Anti-T...

So by this standard, they are an ebook monopoly, but not necessarily one that would be slapped by the feds, provided that people believe Amazon's large market share wasn't the result of abused or unfair power.

spindritf• 12 years ago

Neither. They pass almost all of their surplus to customers. They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned, the anti-Apple.

Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers -- Matthew Yglesias

In this case they are a middleman replacing another middleman. That's just capitalism. Publishers had a good run.

Can Amazon turn evil? Sure. But it will be 20 years this year and they still haven't. If they do, you can replace them tomorrow.

You can even read a book bought anywhere else on your Kindle. EPUB converts to MOBI just like that

    ebook-convert book.epub book.mobi

But that won't be necessary since another book store will happily give you .mobi files. That's some monopoly they have.

As to the point that somehow we will run out of books to read, there is not even the slightest chance that I will read the best 1% of the books published until today in my entire lifetime. That's assuming everyone stops writing now. And statistically I'm a heavy reader, I'm up to 2-3 not-strictly-technical books a month.

anon13854• 12 years ago

They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned

I think we must have a very different idea of 'model corporation'

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_...

The series revealed the lengths Amazon was prepared to go to keep costs down and output high and yielded a singular image of Amazon’s ruthlessness—ambulances stationed on hot days at the Amazon center to take employees suffering from heat stroke to the hospital. Despite the summer weather, there was no air-conditioning in the depot, and Amazon refused to let fresh air circulate by opening loading doors at either end of the depot—for fear of theft
On June 2, 2011, a warehouse employee contacted the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration to report that the heat index had reached 102 degrees in the warehouse and that fifteen workers had collapsed.
On July 25, with temperatures in the depot reaching 110 degrees, a security guard reported to OSHA that Amazon was refusing to open garage doors to help air circulate and that he had seen two pregnant women taken to a nursing station. Calls to the local ambulance service became so frequent that for five hot days in June and July, ambulances and paramedics were stationed all day at the depot

res0nat0r6• 12 years ago

Factory warehouse jobs suck. I used to work in one myself before college.

Those stores are not the everyday in and out working environment, nor is a factory job any way comparable to a 100k salary position. You definitely are not going to have as cushy a work environment no matter what factory you work in.

crazy1van• 12 years ago

Interesting to compare Amazon to Walmart. Frankly I never got my head around the Walmart hate. A far greater number of poor people shop at Walmart than work at Walmart. Their low wages might be bad for their particular employees, but their low prices are good for every poor consumer no matter where they are employed.

AnthonyMouse• 12 years ago

As to the point that somehow we will run out of books to read, there is not even the slightest chance that I will read the best 1% of the books published until today in my entire lifetime. That's assuming everyone stops writing now.

That's giving far too much credit to the argument that Amazon will put authors out of business. Amazon may very well put publishers out of business (and replace them). They have no incentive to put authors out of business, because without authors Amazon would have no new books to sell.

Osmium• 12 years ago

Can Amazon turn evil? Sure. ... If they do, you can replace them tomorrow.

That's precisely the concern though. That, if one day Amazon were to turn evil, the landscape will be so radically changed that no viable competitor would be able to emerge, and there'll be no one to replace them with.

Anderkent9• 12 years ago

This is missing the point completely. Stross doesn't claim amazon is a monopoly (well, other than in the title, but titles necessarily need to simplify to catch attention) - he calls them a monopsomy. Yes, you can if you really try grab the book from a different publisher and copy it to your kindle. 90% of readers won't bother though.

chrismcb2• 12 years ago

"they are a middleman replacing another middleman" True, except the two middleman aren't equivalent. Amazon sales books. Period, end of story. The publisher offers a lot of value, editing, marketing, research, among other things. Perhaps the model will change where the publishers offer the things that Amazon doesn't. But as the Author points out, Amazon wants more of the pie than they are giving back, and as a single author you have less recourse than as a publisher.

larrys• 12 years ago

"So, point one is that this is not a battle of equals: it's a big-ish corporation being picked on by a Goliath more than ten times its size, in an attempt to extort better terms."

This is really a stupid way to put it.

The 1/10th size company is plenty big enough to hire top notch lawyers, lobbyists, PR people etc to fight this battle. The fact is this is really a battle where, past a certain point, size doesn't matter. We are not talking about a schoolyard fight.

What Amazon is doing is wrong (if as reported) however making out the underdog (if you want to call it that) as a "David" as if they are some small 10 person company being picked on by, say, google (and their algorithm) is just hyperbole.

Oletros7• 12 years ago

I would like to see any proof of that accusation of predatory pricing.

MaysonL• 12 years ago

Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling ebooks below cost.

Oletros7• 12 years ago

Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling SOME books below cost.

Still waiting any proof from him about that predatory pricing accusation

WalterBright7• 12 years ago

Oh, rubbish. I have a couple of my own books that no publisher would touch, for sale on Amazon. I have helped a couple authors get their out-of-print-that-no-publisher-would-touch books published on Amazon.

Has Stross considered that maybe it's Hachette that is holding out for unreasonable terms? Maybe he could go with another publisher. He also writes:

"They have a publishing subsidiary and allow me—if I want to self-publish—to use them as a sales channel, and will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms."

I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous.

"It's anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you want to read."

On the contrary, my impression is that there's been a recent explosion of new titles being released, as well as putting old out-of-print books back on the (electronic) shelf.

craigching2• 12 years ago

I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous.

That's not how I read it. I read it as he gets paid extremely well if he accepts the onerous terms. What are the onerous terms? I wish he'd elaborated, but you can imagine it might have something to do with ownership once you've published with Amazon. I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure.

anon13854• 12 years ago

I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure

https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N

You will not, without our express, prior written permission: (a) issue any press release or make any other public disclosures regarding this Agreement or its terms

alexeisadeski3• 12 years ago

Pretty obviously not a monopoly.

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

Given that publishers, authors, printers, bookstore and basically the entire publishing chain has done pretty much fuck all in the 20(!) years that Amazon has been active to even remotely innovate their industry, I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.

Crying on the sideline about how evil Amazon is whilst doing nothing to service readers doesn't get any sympathy votes from me.

And that includes Charlie Stross, who's work I love. I have money and e-reader, but if I want to buy his books, he sends me to... Amazon. To buy DRM-ed vendor-locked Kindle-only copies.

Okay, Accelerando is an exception, but we're talking pretty much the most tech-savvy, open source minded fiction author out there. You can pretty much imagine the state of the rest of the industry.

Amazon is the only party that innovates and tries to provide for the needs of the reader. They've earned their monopoly the hard way. Hachette is not the little guy. Hachette is a multinational that sat on its fat ass counting money for two decades.

chris123• 12 years ago

I don't know if I'd go so far as calling them "plain evil," but they definitely have tendencies. They are certainly a near-monopoly, and they are known to treat their employees (at least the low level ones), vendors, and customers in monopolistic (and maybe evil) ways, such as by basically dictating "everything," for one. That said, I am not at all unbiased. In fact, I strongly dislike Amazon after a bad experience with them as a marketplace seller: Amazon suspended my seller account for life, without opportunity to appeal for an honest mistake I fixed myself before they even noticed it. Details on Ripoff Report: http://goo.gl/xgbelU

Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?

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