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Join NOW!Last year’s battle between Amazon and Hachette over book prices and online sales seems only to have been a portent of an ongoing crisis between publishers and the online retailer. While HarperCollins was able to rather quickly negotiate a deal earlier this year with the online retailer, Amazon is now in a similar showdown with Penguin Random […]
...moreLast year, Amazon went to war with Hachette. Since then, the remaining big publishers have been cutting their own deals with the retail giant. Macmillan, who also had a spat with Amazon in 2010, inked a deal in December. HarperCollins has now also sealed a deal with the retailer.
...moreDuring Amazon’s skirmish with Hachette, one group that rallied to Amazon’s defense were the self-published authors who claimed that the Kindle allowed their overlooked voices a platform. Now, those authors find themselves sinking as the online retailer has turned on them with the Kindle Unlimited service, undermining their book sales. Kindle Unlimited provides Prime subscribers […]
...moreAmazon and Hachette finally resolved their ongoing dispute last month, but the fracas served to illustrate the risk involved with relying on Amazon for such a huge portion of sales. As a result, Hachette is looking to diversify its digital sales by turning to Twitter as an alternative retail avenue. BusinessWeek reports its the first […]
...moreAmazon and Hachette have, for now, resolved their dispute. But their protracted battle over pricing has made Hachette’s Chief Executive Michael Pietsch something of a hero to many in the literary community—in Distinction, Pietsch discusses his journey from a small Boston publishing firm to leading the charge against Amazon: My first job in publishing was as a […]
...moreAmazon and Hachette appear to have entered into a war of attrition, a battle that Hachette, with a more limited budget, is surely going to lose. Alone, Hachette will fall. News that Simon & Schuster easily signed a deal with Amazon was a major blow—and that might just be exactly what Amazon is counting on, […]
...moreWhether Amazon proves friend or foe to the literary cause, its year-old literary journal Day One seems to be putting everyone in an awkward position. Boris Kachka covers its birthday party for Vulture: Genres sell briskly as e-books, while the literary mid-list is still largely hand-sold in physical bookstores, so the Amazon authors hurt most […]
...moreFor Melville House, Alex Shephard examines Amazon’s fraught relationship with George Orwell’s publisher Hachette, criticizing the online shopping hub for misappropriating Orwell’s views on paperback publishing: In context, Orwell not only contradicts Amazon’s argument about paperbacks, he contradicts their entire business model…
...moreAndrew Wylie, arguably the most powerful literary agent in the world, has chosen sides in the Amazon-Hachette battle for global domination, and he’s allied with Authors United. Wylie represents a slew of high-profile writers like Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, and V.S. Naipul—writers he has enlisted to join the 1,000-plus strong group fighting against Amazon. Alex […]
...moreAs the Amazon versus Hachette dispute drags on into its fifth month, Alex Shepard, over at Melville House, examines the conflict, and what it means for publishers and authors: Traditional publishers can’t do what Amazon does; Amazon can’t do what traditional publishers do (and no, the fact that bookstores don’t carry books published by Amazon is […]
...moreAs the Amazon-Hachette war rages on, it seems that not many writers have any kind words for Amazon. But in Slate, author Neal Pollack can’t seem to say enough nice things.
...moreNo matter how the dispute between publisher Hachette and online mage-retailer Amazon resolves itself, the one thing that can be assured is that the publishing industry is changing. Amazon might hope to accelerate and seize control of the changes through pricing, but the book industry was changing even before Amazon started picking fights, warns The […]
...moreMore than 900 authors signed a full-page New York Times advertisement scolding Amazon for drawing them into their continuing fight with publisher Hachette. The ad has drawn the ire of self-published authors who see traditional publishing houses as gatekeepers protecting an elite few. In the most meta coverage of the fracas, the New York Times […]
...moreLast week, Amazon issued an update outlining its position in the ongoing Amazon-Hachette war from a financial standpoint. While its argument that lowering e-book prices will sell more copies is certainly compelling, the New Yorker’s Vauhini Vara explains why authors aren’t buying it.
...moreLet’s dedicate this week to the publications, editors, and benevolent marketing gurus who unleashed a whole bunch of quality FREE short fiction to us. Under the shadow of the FCC’s impending decision as to whether or not net neutrality will continue, these all-you-can-read buffets taste even sweeter. Read on for one potential menu of all […]
...moreA new survey of book buyers shows that some customers are buying fewer books from Amazon as a result with the ongoing conflict with Hachette. The Bookseller reports that though only 61% of respondents knew of the dispute, 19% of those that did were buying fewer books from the online retailer.
...moreEdan Lepucki‘s debut novel California has been the poster child for the conflict between Amazon and Hachette ever since Sherman Alexie plugged the book on The Colbert Report. Since receiving the Colbert bump, California has hit the #3 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. When Colbert invited Lepucki onto Monday’s show, she took the opportunity […]
...moreThe standoff between Amazon and Hachette has harmed authors more than either corporation. The corporations are surviving on massive war chests and alternate revenue streams. Authors, however, are far more adversely affected by reduced book pre-sales and the sale of electronic books (available immediately) versus physical books (artificially delayed by Amazon). In an attempt to […]
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Author Edan Lepucki talks to the Rumpus about publishing, the craft of writing, teaching, and what to do about the end of the world.
...moreThe continuing battle between Amazon and Hachette was the focus of a panel discussion hosted by the New York Public Library last week featuring novelist James Patterson, publisher Morgan Entrekin, literary agent Tina Bennett, and several political theorists. Jason Diamond has a writeup at Flavorwire: The takeaway from the event was this: the trouble Amazon causes […]
...moreAs Amazon and Hachette continue to battle it out, the online retailer has opened an eastern front, delaying shipments from Bonnier, a German publishing group. The German Publishers and Booksellers Association has filed an anti-trust complaint. Amazon, of course, denies the accusation. British booksellers are also concerned with Amazon as the retailer looks to impose new contract […]
...moreThe ongoing battle between Amazon and Hachette has been a boon for independent booksellers. Hachette’s refusal to capitulate to Amazon’s demands has meant that big-name books, like J.K. Rowling’s latest mystery The Silkworm (published under the pen name Robert Galbraith), can’t be pre-ordered from the online giant. According to the New York Times, Seattle indie bookseller Third […]
...moreSurprisingly, YouTube is only now getting its foot in the door with the music streaming game. Their grand entrance, according to this article at Salon, involves terms with which a large number of independent artists disagree—Radiohead, Vampire Weekend, and Animal Collective, just to name a few. YouTube is planning to block these artists from streaming. Ultimately […]
...moreAmazon and Hachette Book Group have been locked in an epic battle over e-book pricing since early May. Amazon began by delaying shipments of Hachette books and then escalated to removing Hachette titles from the site entirely. The leader of this rebellion is Hachette executive Michael Pietsch, once responsible for discovering and editing a little book titled […]
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