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WRITERS and artists are notoriously difficult to corral; it’s both built into the job description and something that keeps the creative class from asserting itself. But lately a number of scribes have united in an effort to resist the bullying of the online bookseller.
The New York Times reports :
Photo by Marian Wood Kolisch
Now, hundreds of other writers, including some of the world’s most distinguished, are joining the coalition. Few if any are published by Hachette. And they have goals far broader than freeing up the Hachette titles. They want the Justice Department to investigate Amazon for illegal monopoly tactics.
They also want to highlight the issue being debated endlessly and furiously on writers’ blogs: What are the rights and responsibilities of a company that sells half the books in America and controls the dominant e-book platform?
The agent Andrew Wylie, who was opposing Amazon before it was cool, has enlisted his clients Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie and Orham Pamuk in the fight.
And one of my favorite writers, Ursula K. Le Guin (right), has come out very decisively on the issue.
Ms. Le Guin, author of “The Left Hand of Darkness,” the Earthsea series and other award-winning works, will be presented her medal by Neil Gaiman, a regular attendee at the all-expenses-paid Campfire weekend for writershosted by Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive. She has strong feelings about the Amazon-Hachette dispute.
“We’re talking about censorship: deliberately making a book hard or impossible to get, ‘disappearing’ an author,” Ms. Le Guin wrote in an email. “Governments use censorship for moral and political ends, justifiable or not. Amazon is using censorship to gain total market control so they can dictate to publishers what they can publish, to authors what they can write, to readers what they can buy. This is more than unjustifiable, it is intolerable.”
CultureCrash is delighted with the rare sight of artists banding together to fight and protect their own ecosystem. Is it enough to make a dent in what’s essentially monopoly capitalism? We’ll keep watching.
As an author, I just can’t get on Hachette’s side. What it wants to do is make its books more expensive than Amazon wants to sell them for. Very little of the premium goes to writers’ royalties. More sales help writers more than higher prices. Amazon is no more a bully to the publishers than the publishers banding together to fix prices tried to be to Amazon. I regret the competitive pressure on small bookstores, but must note that no small bookstores to my knowledge stock my book (which the publisher overpriced, imho). I have oodles of respect for Philip Roth and Ursula LeGuin, but they are in this instance protecting A-list authors without concern for the mid-listers, who are legion and benefit from Amazon’s policies. Readers do, too.
Amazon’s increasing dominance and influence in the book marketplace is bad for everybody except Amazon shareholders. In the long run there will be fewer bookshops, fewer publishers, less choice and little freedom for writers or publishers.
Amazon is the supermarket supplier of books. If we accept Amazon we will end up with mediocre popular books which are cheap and easy to buy… at the expense of quality and specialised books and booksellors, which will become more expensive and harder to find.
Our children will not know what quality is.
Regular instant coffee for everyone. What a sad and sickening thought.
I do not buy from Amazon, NOR SHOULD YOU !
David, I beg to differ. Fewer publishers? I think rather more small, independent publishers rather than the int’l behemoths that pay oodles for never-to-be-read doorstoppers by politicians and celebs. Fewer bookstores? This is a trend that has been ongoing since the ’70s, and I believe it means no Waldenbooks and maybe no Barnes and Noble, but small, local independent bookstores that personally service a nurtured local clientele (Amazon is certainly not hurting but rather enabling the used book market). Less freedom for writers? Hogwash — Amazon makes self-publishing and self-marketing much more viable than ever in the past, and pays a significantly higher split to writers than any publisher’s contract provides. See Neal Pollack’s article in Slate for a very active author’s view. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/09/in_defense_of_amazon_an_author_s_dissent.html
I just want to add that the publishers have brought this problem on themselves by disregarding the digital revolution, in the same way record companies insisted digitalization of music was a fad and would fade away. Publishers DO have a role in helping great books reach the market — it’s called “editing,” which most publishers have cut way back on since the heyday of American writing in the last century. There is no reason Amazon books or books available via Amazon should be more mediocre than what’s being sold in stores today. And Amazon is not driving into oblivion the vast resources of historic literature. I do not fear for my childrens’ or grandchildrens’ acquaintance with literary excellence because of Amazon delivering an enormous catalog of books almost instantly (after allowing in-book searches and free samples) or because Google is digitizing as much as it can. Don’t let publishers like Hachette fool you. They are not protecting the literary world.
Amazon may have its good points, but the vast majority of authors — not just superstars — are troubled by its concentrated power.
And if you value bookstores, you cannot say Amazon is a minor or insignificant factor in their closing. It has had a major hand in wiping out hundreds, maybe thousands.
This from a May 28 Atlantic story:
“By some estimates, today Amazon controls around 50 percent of all book sales—physical and electronic—in the U.S. In the past decade, the company has steadily grown that market share, taking it from Barnes & Noble (shrinking), Borders (bankrupt since 2011), and independent bookstores (around 2,000 remain today out of the nearly 7,000 there were in the mid-1990s).”
Praise Amazon all you want, but it’s simply been destructive to brick-and-mortar stores.
Scott, when I as a kid I loved Kroch’s and Brentano’s, the largest bookstore in Chicago and at one point the largest privately owned bookstore chain in the U.S. Cribbing from Wikipedia (which may be responsible for the declines of better encyclopedias), “Kroch refused to offer the sorts of discounts that other book chains did, even though the store suffered when large discount chains, such as Crown Books, opened up nearby. When Crown opened its downtown Chicago store a few blocks north of the 29 S. Wabash location, Kroch’s management felt that it was not a serious threat, since it did not offer “full service”. However, unable to compete with the discount bookstores, Kroch’s and Brentano’s closed its doors in 1995.”
Brentano’s, established on 5th ave. in NYC in 1853 and an important publisher as well as retailer, was acquired by Waldenbooks (owned by KMart) and merged into Borders (also owned by KMart) in 1994. During the 1990s, Borders and Barnes and Noble were expanding quickly, and also accused of destroying the independent book store model. Amazon opened in 1995, and took market share from Borders and B&N which had been knocking the small indies out prior to that. We have to factor in the rise of the internet in general and all the diversions available on it when we talk about the decline of indie bookstores, too.
Let us productively criticize and regulate capitalism, with a special eye towards disallowing monopolies and unfair trade practices, As independent promoters of literacy (whether as writers or publishers or readers), let us see that books are widely available, for instance by supporting and promoting public libraries (agains such ridiculous limits as those imposed by mainstream publishers on the lending of e-books). I have yet to read any cogent critique of Amazon by writers who have read their own contracts with major or minor publishers; most of the concern seems to be knee-jerk nostalgia, and please point me to articles that you think are more substantive.
Howard, I certainly agree that Amazon was not the ONLY factor in the diminishing of independent bookstores. Similarly, guns are not the only factor in a mass shooting, and financial deregulation was not the only factor in the economic crash.
Maybe Amazon was responsible for only 60% of the closings. Maybe only half. Still significant, and anyone who loves bookstores and defends Amazon needs to reconcile that dissonance. Perhaps it can be done, but dismissing its role in this simply does not make sense.
Part of the way Amazon was able to offer discounts, which hurt the bookstores, was by finding a way to avoid the same taxes that the brick-and-mortar stores were paying. And they bullied publishers selling them their books at something close to a loss.
Anyone who fears concentrated cultural power should beware of Amazon.
Scott, the NYT story is just another one of those that presents Hachette’s view via the endorsement of best-selling, highly acclaimed and respected writers, who may not necessarily have the same economic interests I have (and you will when your book is published). I believe Amazon and all US corporations should pay taxes. I understand Amazon treats its employees terribly, and that’s not good. Amazon has been a player in the decline of bookstores, though I was trying to make the point that big bookstores have gobbled up small bookstores for half a century. I love small and independent bookstores; I’ve made a habit of shopping at Barbara’s Books, the Strand (another deep discounter), Powell’s, the Mysterious Bookstore and Partners in Crime. . .so that’s how I try to reconcile the dissonance. But I’ve bought lots of e-books via Amazon — they aren’t sold by brick and mortar stores, that’s the real problem when peoples’ reading habits are shifting, isn’t it? 00 and a b&m store can’t beat the convenience of browsing from home. Simultaneously, an online store can’t beat the intimacy of personal service, so a b&m store would seem to something of a strength in its genuine local presence.
On the return of independent bookstores:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-okelly/indie-bookstores-arent-de_b_5884584.html
Thanks Howard — saw that. A lot of optimism about indies rebounding and I will write about in future post.
I like the privacy provided by the independent bookstore.