Amazon fucks up again
It’s not great secret that Amazon.com has been acting like a pack of ruthless sociopaths for the last few years. What good does it do to pursue your own self-interest if you define it so narrowly that the people you do business with hate you so much they can’t wait for the chance to slip a poisoned knife in your back? I’m not talking about competitors; I mean your suppliers and customers.
Nevermind this article here, which details how Luxembourg-based Amazon.co.uk only pays 3% VAT tax yet demands a 20% VAT tax payment from UK publishers.
At this point, they’re now turning on their customers. One woman discovered that her account had been closed and all of her books deleted. Why? Amazon doesn’t feel that it has any reason to explain. They take your money, they erase the goods they sold you, they act like shitheels when you ask for their reasons.
You know what sucks? I sell the Twenty Palaces prequel through every service I can, from Smashwords to B&N to this very site, but the overwhelming proportion of my sales come through Amazon. We’re talking 95%. Also, a few years back I spent a full month posting affiliate links exclusively to Indiebound and then a full month doing the same with Mysterious Galaxy. No one bought anything. They only bought books when I linked to Amazon.
This puts me someplace I really don’t want to be: Most of the money I’ve earned this year has come from a company that I’ve grown to hate. I feel dirty doing business with them. I’ve been a customer of theirs, too.
So how screwed up is it that I can’t wait from someone to come along and kick their asses?
newest »
A wholesale abandonment of platform-specific DRM would help, too, since reader could buy anywhere and read on any device. Amazon wants people to be locked into their little ecosystem, but there's no reason I have to think it's a good idea. And thanks for the kind words about my books. I hope you like the next thing I do, too.
Yes. I like Baen's attitude - no DRM, and also they have adopted the drug-pusher business model (give people a free book to get them hooked...) Amazon are never going to abandon DRM while they still have the most popular reading device - after all, it's working in their favour. Presumably they don't care much that non-kindle people are locked out. The only thing that would induce Amazon to abandon DRM, I think, would be the marketing of a cheap-but-excellent reader device, and if other online booksellers had as good a selection of books. As it is, Amazon has the customer coming and going: kindles are cheap, so if you want a cheap reader you end up with a kindle and thus locked into the Amazon store. If you want the biggest, cheapest selection of ebooks available, you need to buy a kindle to access it.
If other booksellers had the range of Amazon and could attract the customers, I bet we'd see an abandonment of DRM so that they could all fight over the customers. As it is, Amazon provides the best selection of books, at the cheapest prices, and also provides a cheap book-reader. If you have to live with being imprisoned in Amazon's ecosystem to gain those very real advantages, then many people will grit their teeth and do it.
Of course, publishers would argue, presumably, that DRM serves the author, as the copyright holder, by preventing unauthorised copying. Personally, I don't believe it (because a determined copyer will do it, even if they have to take screenshots of every page... it has been done!). What's your take - as an author with, presumably, a keen interest in people paying money for reading your work?
I will be looking out for your next stuff... so far, you portray magic as scary and dangerous; I like that.
One thing I should mention: Amazon happily sells DRM-free fiction. When I self-published the 20 Palaces prequel (not to mention my short fiction) I toggled the settings to be DRM-free. It's the publishers that insist on DRM, and by doing so they serve Amazon's interest and (I suggest) harm their own.
What Amazon does, though, is sell ebooks in the .mobi filetype. Even DRM-free, you need a program like Caliber or whatever to change them to the .epub filetype. It's easy to do, but most people don't bother.
You're right, of course... duh. I do wonder whether we will ever get to the point of having only one ebook format - and if so, which one. ePub is supposed to be industry standard, but if the biggest ebook retailer isn't using it, is 'industry standard' simply empty words? I'm a Calibre user myself; I like the freedom of being able to shop where I want.
Last I heard (not that I'm an expert or anything), ebook sales were outstripping paper book sales. Now, that matters because the most popular book reader is the kindle - which, of course, ties the owner into the Amazon bookshop.
The way to fight Amazon, therefore (from a book sales point of view) is to point out the existence of other book readers. I personally own a Sony Reader. It's a much more elegant device both physically and technologically, it has more storage space, and I can shop anywhere I want to. I wouldn't have a kindle as a gift (OK, I would, but I would sell it on immediately and buy myself a new Sony).
(Also, Mr Connolly, I really enjoyed the Twenty Palaces books - Ray Lilly and Annalise Powliss are two of the best urban fantasy protagonists I've read in ages. Just thought I'd mention it.)