The group Authors United spearheaded
by Douglas Preston intends to send (or has sent, depending on when you read
this) a letter to the Amazon Board of Directors regarding the Amazon/Hachette
dispute. Given the dispute has been going on for months, it seems unlikely any
director is unaware of the situation, so what is the purpose of the letter?
Perhaps the group is trying to put pressure on the directors in their other
working capacities? It will be interesting to see what (if any) reaction this
letter brings from the directors.
My concerns are not with writing a
letter to the Directors, but with the content of the letter. If the drafters
would stick to facts, they could make a more powerful argument. But they stray
from facts into justification, and that negates the power of the facts.
Potent
charges:
“About six
months ago, to enhance its bargaining position, Amazon began sanctioning
Hachette authors' books. These sanctions included refusing preorders, delaying
shipping, reducing discounting, and using pop-up windows to cover authors'
pages and redirect buyers to non-Hachette books.
These
sanctions have driven down Hachette authors' sales at Amazon.com by at least 50
percent and in some cases as much as 90 percent. These sales drops are
occurring across the board: in hardcovers, paperbacks, and e-books. Because of
Amazon's immense market share and its proprietary Kindle platform, other
retailers have not made up the difference. Several thousand Hachette authors
have watched their readership decline, or, in the case of new authors, have
seen their books sink out of sight without finding an adequate readership.”
Had the authors next provided
specific data to back up their statements—for example, screen shots of pop-ups,
a case study of a debut author whose debut was ruined, and perhaps made
pre-dispute post-dispute comparisons—they could have cemented in their readers’
minds how Amazon was harming specific authors. Putting faces on the problem
would invoke wider sympathy. Authors who have “sold
more than a billion books” should know about proper characterization.
Where
the wheels fall off their arguments
The wheels fall off their battering
ram in their attempt to storm Amazon’s gates when they stray from facts and
wander into attempts at wider justification. The collapse starts with the
patently false conclusion of this sentence, “We'd like
to emphasize that most of us are not Hachette authors, and our concern is
founded on principle, rather than self-interest.”
These authors make their living
(multiple millions of dollars a year for some of them) based on a traditional
publishing model. Threats to that model, including Amazon’s tactics and
marketplace power, are threats to their individual welfare. Amazon is
negotiating with Hachette today, but soon it with be negotiating with the other
four of the big five publishers. Those signing authors with contracts with the
other big publishers want Amazon to back off now before their publisher suffers
similar negotiating tactics.
“Efforts to
impede or block the sale of books have a long and ugly history.” Reading
this sentence, I conjured piles of burning books in the streets and school
boards banning books because their content was “anti-religious,” or “smut” or
“Devil-worshiping.” Is this what they would have us believe Amazon is doing? Where
is their angst about independent bookstores refusing to carry books published
by their competitor, Amazon? Perhaps I missed it or it’s coming soon. I’m not
holding my breath. This dispute is more akin to Walmart deciding to not stock
any P&G products, but carry those of Unilever instead, than banning the
sale of toothpaste.
But these authors disagree, and
state, “Amazon has every right to refuse to sell
consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler. We all
appreciate discounted razor blades and cheaper shoes. But books are not
consumer goods. Books cannot be written more cheaply, nor can authors be
outsourced to China. Books are not toasters or televisions. Each book is the
unique, quirky creation of a lonely, intense, and often expensive struggle on
the part of a single individual, a person whose living depends on his or her
book finding readers. This is the process Amazon is obstructing.”
How
wrong can they be?
Their analysis is wrong on several
accounts: Books are indeed consumer goods—who do they think buys their books if
not consumers? Books can and are written more cheaply than those accepted by
major publishers. Most fiction authors (based on numbers of authors, not sales
revenue) write on speculation. They put their heart, soul and countless hours
into creating their manuscript. Many will give their work away or sell it for
$0.99 just to have others read it. That each book is unique is immaterial.
No person has a right to demand
society pay in order for the individual to follow his dream, nor to specify how
that dream should be funded. “Publishers provide venture capital for ideas.
They advance money to authors, giving them the time and freedom to write their
books.” Is the implication here that, if Amazon is successful, publishers will
no longer use advances as a selling tool to entice authors to sign with them?
They would have us believe that because
of the additional risk caused by Amazon’s negotiating tactics, publishers
cannot afford advances? In 2013 the big five publishers had record earnings
(over $1 billion), according to Publishers
Lunch with gross profit margins of almost 11% on sales of almost $9.3
billion. The letter’s authors need to document any decline in advances that has
occurred after (and therefore perhaps because of) disputes with Amazon.
At best, it is too early to tell the
effect this dispute will have on advances, and ignores the change in large
publishers’ practices regarding advances for midlist authors—a topic too large
to address here.
Amazon’s
purported responsibilities to the current system
The letter goes on to ask, “What will Amazon replace this process with? How, in the
Amazon model, will a young author get funding to pursue a promising idea? And
what about the role of editors, copy editors, and other publishing staff who
ensure that what ultimately ends up on the shelf is both worthy and accurate?”
The publishing arm of Amazon pays
advances to some of its authors; but more to the point, why is it Amazon the
retailer’s responsibility to devise a solution to a postulated problem of
declining advances? And what does the role of editors, copy editors, etc. have
to do with anything relating to Amazon’s tactics in negotiating with Hachette?
Amazon (the retailer) is a
middleman, selling content—in this case books. If the quality is high (however
consumers define quality), people will buy it. If they don’t like the product
they don’t buy it unless they have to, and books are not (for most people) a
required purchase. Consumers don’t much care how the product is made; they only
care about the overall level of satisfaction the product provides.
Furthermore, if venture capital is
so important to authors (especially nonfiction per the letter), are publishers
the only source? Today crowdsourcing funds a variety of businesses and some authors
are selling pieces of their future revenues. In times past, individual patrons
sponsored artists; perhaps aspiring authors need to find angel investors for
the 21st century. My point is that even if advances are important
for authors, publishers, while the current source, are not the only source, and
it is unlikely Amazon is the only cause of their demise, should that happen.
My
advice to the authors of these letters intending to get public support for
publishers in their disputes with Amazon: use your talents to paint rich
pictures of how regular folks have been devastated by Amazon’s practices. Give
us a debut author whose books gathered terrific advanced reviews, whose sales
at Barnes and Noble and Independent Bookstores are gangbusters, but because
they are not listed on Amazon, the publishers will consider the book a flop.
Find a single parent author whose spouse died fighting in Iraq and who is the
sole support for three small children. Imply Amazon has ruined this family’s
lives, even if it’s not strictly true. Stick a petition on Change.org and get a
hundred-thousand signatures. Have Michal Moore make a documentary. Then, maybe
you can put some pressure on Amazon.
This letter? An embarrassing
misfire.
~ Jim
