These are two multibillion dollar companies each looking out for their own interests and bottom lines.

The idea that Hachette, a huge and powerful company, is a victim here is rather absurd.

Nobody cares.

Dude, for fucks sake, Paul, get a hobby!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/o…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias

Nationalize Amazon.
Make it into a worker-owned cooperative with its Board of Directors made up of Students and Intellectuals.

@1,

If Amazon pulls this shit with a multibillion-dollar company, what do you think it does to smaller companies?

@4,

What gives you the impression that The Stranger gives a fuck about unbiased coverage?

A good writer like Gaiman can analyze a complex situation and express himself in a nuanced, measured fashion. I hope you're taking notes Paul.

@8,

You're slipping. I complimented Amazon in Paul's Amazon post this morning.

P.S. Fuck off, cocksucker.

I guess some butthurt Amazon drone has decided to stand up to that meanie Paul Constant and let him know his bullying won't be tolerated.

@8 Paul strokes the hate hard-on, keshmeshi swallows what comes out.

@2 A whole bunch of authors who have managed to reach the point of being able to make a living through their writing courtesy of Hachette care a whole great honking lot. Fans of the above mentioned, and that's a good-sized chunk of the reading public, care.
Bias! Oh nos!! Because nothing that Amazon is saying themselves is in any way biased towards their preferred narrative at all. They are but simple naifs to the world of media bereft of any means to get their side of the story before both the public and their customers. Only an obsessed socialist stooge would fail to take every word from Amazon concerning their business practices as the pure and unvarnished truth, pure as the driven snow fallen gently to the earth from a soaring mountain peak.

@12 So now Amazon is the entire retail book market upon which these writers must base their living? Seems like they'd have a lot more customers if the publishers weren't asking Amazon to charge as much for an ebook as they would for a hardcover. I think that's the real problem. Publishers want to charge the same for something that costs them way less to produce, and isn't nearly the same value for the customer. But keep hating on Amazon.

I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that the problem stems from Amazon wanting to price eBooks cheaper than the publishers want. Can someone explain to me why $5 for an eBook of a paperback and $10-15 of a hardback isn't plenty? (I refuse to *rent* eBooks of paperbacks at $10 which is what Amazon seems to charge for a lot of the books I want...)

While I think that Amazon, as a corporate citizen is pretty terrible, I don't think that the publishers are doing much better.

@6 What shit? Not letting publishers demand they overprice eBooks? I would hope that they do.

It's anti-consumer.

Publishers are becoming less and less relevant. Especially in the eBook world. I don't really see why I should pay more for eBooks to keep them propped up.

@15 EXACTLY, but I believe ebooks should be priced around $5-6 in general. You don't get any of the value you would get out of a real book (re-sale, ability to have autographed, shelf candy), and the publisher can produce them for a fraction of what it costs to produce an ink and paper book.

Note that Gaiman still has well over 20 titles for currently sale on Amazon.

Yeeeee-uuuuh. That's how mad he is.

Why he's so mad he'll take their dirty money and maybe go and buy a book at Powell's.

TAKE THAT AMAZON!

oops: "...for sale *currently*"

#18

You could argue Amazon "owns" the e-book market but what is an e-book. It's just a file with DRM. And an e-Reader is just a tablet. Today I see that Wal*Mart is offering a quite nice one of those for $99.

I can see if Amazon had the only machine in town that could display and transmit a file for reading, but they don't. For example, I'm reading an e-book right now I got from KCLS on loan - and it's using Adobe Digital Editions, which can run on a PC or (some) tablets.

So if you want to be a publisher all you need is your own app and DRM scheme to manage the files. Or use Adobe Digital Editions. You can set up a site and paywall. Use Amazon's Cloud, or Microsoft's.

@12 Nobody still cares.

Corporation 1 fucks Corporation 2. Meanwhile, both Corporation 1 and Corporation 2 will use this as public excuses to keep their wages low. And the public loses.

@17, I can at least understand the "justification" of pricing a hardcover eBook at $10-15 - or, I could understand not releasing the eBook version until the paperback comes out.

Regardless, eBook pricing is broken pretty much any way you look at it. And I'm sure that if Amazon wasn't pissing off publishers, we'd be looking at $13+ for all eBooks.

@22 is closest to nailing what's important here. You don't have to sympathize with Hachette to be suspicious of Amazon. What should concern us is Amazon bargaining for deals that severely undercut the rest of the market--other booksellers, in other words.

Neil Gaiman is a hack.

Sorry, @9, but your reputation as a Slog apologist precedes you. Folks are catching on.

I don't trust the opinion of anyone married to Amanda Palmer.

Even my eyes can't roll this hard, bro. BRO.

Publishers certainly understand pricing, and they understand what's happening when Amazon pressures them to agree to terms that mean they would lose money. Anyone who thinks an e-book is nothing but a bunch of text in pdf has either not written a book or never stopped to think about what's involved in making a book out of a manuscript. Amazon is currently flooded with book-like products --
e-book and otherwise -- created and promoted and sold by their authors. A huge proportion of those products are unfiltered junk, precisely because the creators hadn't thought their subject through, didn't know enough (or anything) about writing, and/or didn't see any need to submit their work to any editing more critical than Spell Check. If you want to pay 99 cents for something like that, and if you don't feel ripped off after you've finished reading it, feel free. I like books that have had professional attention, and I'm willing to pay for them. When the price of paper and artists and editors and printing presses and binding and copyright lawyers and all the other components of a published book begin to recede from their current levels, the price of books will too. But if Amazon forces publishers to take terms that mean the publishers end by going out of business, all we'll have left is the self-published . . . stuff that sells for 99 cents.

I just bought groceries from Amazon Fresh. I also purchased the a reference manual for work.

@30 so when an artists work appears as a mass market paperback, then they're also getting fucked? So maybe the publishing industry is fucking authors with or with out Amazons help?

If I bought Neverwhere as a mass market paperback from the local bookstore for 99 cents, am I fucking the artist over?

@33, No fucking local bookstore is selling Neverwhere for 99 cents. They are selling it for the list price, drone. Local book stores don't get the discounts Amazon does.

(Unless you meant used books, which have nothing to do with this discussion. But even then it's not gonna be that cheap because it's not a book that's gouing to languish on the shelf forever.)

The only connection between Paul's post and BeelzBallard's inane comments is the correct spelling of the word "Amazon". BB isn't responding to the post, just trolling. Successfully, apparently.

Paul, it's time to find something new to write about.