There’s been a lot of ranting back and forth lately about the Amazon/Macmillan fiasco of a couple of weeks back, and I thought I’d take a moment to make clear what I thought (and what I believe a lot of other authors thought) about the whole thing.
First of all, it wasn’t about the pricing. Personally, I don’t think either pricing model being proposed is the right one. I think ebooks should be priced like mass market paperbacks, mostly because I think mass market paperbacks are what ebooks are going to ultimately replace. So I don’t really care one way or the other about Amazon’s or Macmillan’s pricing models. (Not that Amazon or Macmillan care what I think about book pricing. I have even less input on that than I do on the cover art.)
What it was about for me was bullying. I don’t like bullies. I have no idea what was happening at the negotiating table – maybe Macmillan said something to Amazon that left Amazon no recourse but to pull the buy buttons from Macmillan’s books. But I doubt it. Mostly Amazon’s tactics struck me as those of the kid in the pickup basketball game who, not liking the fact that the gang doesn’t want to play by his rules, takes his ball and goes home. It’s his ball, so he can do what he wants. But that doesn’t mean I can’t think he’s a jerk for doing it.
And, because there was a personal element involved, ie my books being affected (I probably lost only two or three sales, but still), my reaction was a bit more virulent than it might otherwise have been. But, even if I hadn’t been involved, I think the substance of my reaction would have remained the same.
I don’t like bullies.
Chicks in chainmail and soubrettes with swords just don’t do it for me any more. I’ll take a 19th c. spinster who can do sums any time. She takes on her tradesman father, marries one of his workingmen, and gets her sisters settled into the bargain. If you can get past Charles Laughton hamming it up as a drunk, this is a very funny flick.
Boskone this weekend. In Boston, of course. I’m still trying to think of any bad books I love, since mostly I don’t ike good books either.
Friday 9pm More on the Business of Writing
S. C. Butler (M)
Elaine Isaak
Melinda Snodgrass
Ian Tregillis
Last year we did this program item, and people enjoyed it so much
that we’re doing it again! Find out what the writer needs to know
and do to become (financially) successful (or, at least
responsible). It’s not all creativity or perspiration, no matter
what you’ve heard before!
Friday 10pm Bad Books I Love
S. C. Butler
Kathryn Cramer
Theodora Goss
Paul Levinson (M)
Feorag NicBhride
Choose your favorite piece of mindless mush, and persuade us to look
at it a second time. Admit those guilty pleasures! (C’mon, you know
you want to!)
Saturday2pm The City and Science Fiction
S. C. Butler
Alexander Jablokov (M)
James Patrick Kelly
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Steven H. Silver
From the planet-spanning urbs of Trantor or Coruscant to the
steamfunkier precincts of New Crobuzon to the vastly vertical
Spearpoint of Alastair Reynolds forthcoming Terminal World what s
your favorite skiffy megalopolis? Would you move there tomorrow?
Would it actually work as a technological/societal/economic
artifact? In an advanced, post-scarcity society, would people even
want to pig-pile together? What will cities be like in the future?
(And what would you prefer them to be?)
Saturday5pm Autographing
Sunday 11am Reading (0.5 hrs)
Boy, do I. Best book I’ve read in a long time, fiction or non-fiction. Throes of Democracy is the second book in Walter A. McDougall’s projected multivolume history of the US. The first, Freedon Just Around the Corner, took us from the European arrival in North America to Jackson’s election in 1828. The current volume continues the narrative to Rutherford B. Hayes’s disputed election in 1876. (And you thought 2000 was bad.)
The books are smetimes glib to a fault. They are surveys of their times, not in-depth analyses. McDougall’s tone is ironic and conservative, with a touch of the gleeful cynic as well. But the conservatism is not the false conservatism of the current day, which wishes to conserve nothing but ts own power. It is an older conservatism that does not believe in the perfectability of humanity, and views all such attempts as vainglorious, dictatorial, and more than a little self-serving. In short, it is a scholarly point of view that is very much out of step with mainstream progressive American scholarship (the NY Times savaged the book), or the conservative backlash that currently represents the other side of the debate.
Whatever you think of the theme, it is a great read. McDougall has no sacred cows (except maybe Lincoln), and savages everyone from the Transcendentalists to the Know-Nothings. (Having been forced to worship Emerson and the Transcendentalists at my New England college I enjoyed their skewering very much.) He views the Civil War as a disaster for all parties, with the freeing of the slaves barely making up for the century of Black American sufferng that followed. His main thesis, that the US has always been a nation of self-interested hucksters draping ourselves in moral hypocrisy in order to justify our ambition and greed is, in my opinion, completely accurate. And very appropriate, given our current natonal condition.
It’s a beutifully written and very interesting book. If you like the bashing of sacred cows, do yourself a favor and take a look.
MacMillan’s books are still not up at Amazon.
A friend at one of the other Big Six Publishing Conglomerates says her firm is proposing the same pricing to Amazon and is not sure why MacMillan was singled out.
I think more than a few readers are going to take Amazon’s side because of the lower pricing Amazon proposed. Many readers don’t care whether an author makes a living - American consumers want what they want as cheaply as possible, whether it’s books or golf balls. There’s a reason media started referring to American citizens as ‘consumers’ in the seventies and it’s not a pretty one. Amazon certainly attempted to spin the issue this way in their unattributed statement on the Kindle forum.
It will be interesting to see how the media spin the story. Will they take Amazon’s side and portray the retailer as the Defender of the Consumer? Will they take MacMillan’s side and portray Amazon as the internet bully? Will they take no one’s side? Taking no one’s side is probably the same as taking Amazon’s side, if today’s NYTimes piece is any indication. The article took no position, but it did quote the Amazon line about MacMillan’s monopoly on its own books with a straight face.
So sad to hear she’s gone. Her cleverness, her fluid style, and above all the good humor of her books, will be missed. A wonderful writer.
A theory about AmazonFail. If you examine what Amazon is trying to accomplish from their point of view, why do they even need publishers? Why not just open the Kindle directly to authors - give the authors then entire 30% that Amazon is paying the publishers now. 30% on a $9.99 book is not that much lower than 15% on $28 hardcover, and if you move more of the cheaper book it could be much more. Plus Amazon could take a page from Harlequin and open the Kindle to anyone - in fact, they could even charge authors for the privilege! $250 to publish your own ebook! I’m sure a lot of folks would jump at the chance. Then Amazon would leave the marketing to the blogverse, which is probably the future of marketing anyway.
Who needs publshers? I wonder if Amazon is offering a 40% deal to selected bestselling authors right now.
Apparently Amazon and Macmillan are having it out (Tor, my publisher, is a subsidiary of Macmillan) over ebook pricing. Amazon is currently not selling ANY books published by ANY division of Macmillan except through third party sellers. suricattus has a good post about it.
Oy.
So Obama caved on trying terrorists in NY. Why? Because it was too inconvenient and too expensive.
We never are going to achieve anything if that’s always our excuse.
