Amazon vs the store down the street

Thursday, February 4th, 2010 | books, internet

I don’t have anything terribly intelligent or informed to add to discussion over the Amazon.com vs Macmillan price debacle. In fact, I love, love, love Amazon. But I also understand the importance of supporting local businesses and I understand why authors whose books were yanked from the world’s biggest book marketplace (even temporarily) would be pissed off right now. In fact, Charles Stross removed Amazon from his “buy my books” area all together. Which led to a fairly delightful discovery for me. Now Stross’ links direct you to IndieBound, a site that (among other things) can help you find local bookstores carrying the title you want. You can go get the book yourself or order online from their participants. I wonder if the site can tell you if they serve good coffee, too.

4 Comments to Amazon vs the store down the street

Trog
February 5, 2010

The reason for the debate was because of Macmillan’s deal with Apple for distributing their books over the iPad. To my understanding Apple is letting publishers set their own price for books. The day after the iPad announcement (which included a passing reference to Macmillan amongst others iirc) Macmillan met with Amazon to try and get the same sort of deal from them. Amazon got “upset” over it and pulled the titles only to give in soon afterward.

Zeb
February 6, 2010

I thought the hullabaloo was because McMillan wanted Amazon to charge more for the ebooks than for the physical hardcovers of the same works when the costs for distribution of ebooks, obviously, is far, far lower? Thus Amazon’s statement that they are being forced to charge prices that “are needlessly high” for those ebooks.

Littlest Penguin
February 6, 2010

Zeb, that was the official word from Amazon and I thought so too. But today Charles Stross had a *very* angry post up with more links and details. Apparently Amazon said the “fight” was over and that McMillan books were again available, but McMillan / Tor books remain unavailable. Also, Stross points out that there are and always have been ebooks available for the Kindle costing more than $9.99 so that couldn’t have been the real problem.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/amazonfail-round-up.html

What can I say? I’m just glad I’m not an author. (Though I’d like to see William published someday.)

Zeb
February 20, 2010

Argh. I forgot to check back and see if there were any other comments. Anywhos, I read the linked article, but didn’t read any of his links. What I fail to see in any of this, maybe it’s there and I’m just too lazy, is Mr. Stross or MacMillan addressing not the issue of the flat price of the books, but the accusation that MacMillan wanted Amazon to charge teh same or more for the ebooks than for the print books. If a book is selling for $60 in hardcover and $45 in paperback, I don’t see an issue with charging $30 for the ebook. What I thought was the case was that MacMillan wanted Amazon to charge $15 for the paperback AND the ebook. While I agree that the cost of production for an ebook is not zero, it is inarguably far less than it is for a physical tome. The same editing that has been done for the physical book applies to the electronic one. Only, for the electronic distribution, only one, virtual, copy needs to be produced in order for Amazon to distribute it. The publishers don’t even need to provide the distribution mechanism as Amazon provides the storage and bandwidth to do that for them.

From what I can gather, Amazon isn’t looking to make more money here. In fact, it seems like their profit margin would be cut by reducing the sale price unless they get a flat fee regardless of the cost of the book (I admit to ignorance on how this works). They’re simply asking that the ebook be seen as a tiered product in a way that is not unlike that of paperbacks to hardcovers. Imagine the uproar if we had to pay the same price for both of those?

*looking forward to having my gaps in understanding filled*