I think I need to get off the internet for awhile.

(number of words written today: *mumblemumble*)

Aaaaaugh. I don't want to have to care about the minutia of e-book pricing except when I'm staring at the "buy" button next to one!

While have lots of empathy for him, I'd certainly prefer Mr. Charlton's form of suffering over the one I'll be facing if Amazon manages to get away with throwing this spitball. I would be much happier if there was a publishing industry that was more able and interested in taking risks on new authors, and I'm not optimistic about the prospects for that if big retail continues to be able to dictate prices to publishers.

I can't gripe too loudly, though. My town has an independent new/used bookseller that splits the bookseller's discount with the customer. They get a *lot* of special orders. They'll get one more tomorrow.

You can't just sue somebody becasue they won't agree with you.

Well, in theory, you can't, anyway. I must admit that my present caseload tends to refute my point . . .

Uh, Jeff Bezos's penis?

Croak!

The idea of an "only major internet retailer" might have made sense in the later half of the 1990s, when being an internet retailer required going out and building infrastructure. It does not make any kind of sense now. Much of Amazon's present concerns hinge on keeping their suppliers from noticing this. (This specific kerfuffle indicates that they've failed. Expect things to get interesting over the next couple-five years.)

If y'all want a better ebook world, you need to find your congresscritter and explain that you will shave their cats unless they promptly and decisively publish a bill forbidding, on pain of criminal penalties for the corporate officers and huge (15% of annual gross revenue or your total profits, whichever is larger) fines, any sale of anything that isn't in a non-proprietary format.

To be a non-proprietary format, it has to:
- completely lack patent or license cost encumbrances
- exist in at least 2 fully-interoperable competing and independently arrived at implementations
- have the implementation standard published in some public way

So, you know, paper books are fine. PDF is fine. (Almost. Some of Adobe's bells and whistles wouldn't be.) HTML is fine. DRM isn't fine until it meets this standard (which it could easily do) but you wouldn't have device lock in.

I keep hoping someone will have a rush of sense to the head and start selling ebooks on memory chips, preferably in "collected works" scale editions. You get the physical copy, it's visual obvious it's legit, and there isn't much if anything in the way of a portability hit.

But then they take down sales links, and now it's getting on for not just a short time, and it's not just business doing business. It affects customers, and authors.

And I don't think Amazon can win this game of chicken. If people want to buy a book, I think they want to buy a specific book usually, and will find it easy to go to another bookseller. Rather than find another book that Amazon still carries. And in the meantime, Amazon is engendering tremendous ill-will - from the authors, from informed customers, and from customers who are surprised they can't buy what they were searching for.

I like Amazon. I have a prime account, I own a Kindle. I used to _work_ for a division of Amazon (IMDb) in their headquarters in Seattle. I still own a modest amount of stock in AMZN from that time. And so, it kills me to see them doing this.

It doesn't take a genius to win a PR war when the other side's position amounts to, "We want to raise prices on a product that the general public already complains is overpriced." Amazon's certainly managed that trick.

Sure, those retailers would take a short term hit in profitability, and Amazon will get to keep the monies paid out (unless a legal case can be made for them to have to honor the coupons if submitted by the other vendors) on those non-redeemed-by-Amazon coupons, but the Amazon loses those sales and customer loyalty, and the other retailer gets some add-on sales and gains the customer loyalty and good-will

If people want to buy a book, I think they want to buy a specific book usually, and will find it easy to go to another bookseller.

This is exactly what I think. This is exactly how I buy books online. I only browse in real bookstores. If Amazon imagines that no one is capable of navigating to another website and buying a book there . . . well, they're about to learn better.

Now, if people actually do respond to "Customers who bought this book also bought this one" and add new books to their order that way, that would be a problem, if no Macmillan books are being recommended. But I rarely if ever have done that.

I can understand that authors would be upset about not being able to see their books (and reviews) on Amazon. But me, if I knew a certain book existed but I didn't see it on Amazon, I'd just say "That's odd" and go elsewhere.

How often do people discover books on Amazon that they didn't know about before? And buy them then and there?

Isn't Macmillan screwing them over just the same too? They won't give in either.

becca @15: I was going to say, "well, Amazon usually has the 'Look Inside This Book' thing," and then I realized... I'm becoming increasingly disturbed how much I've come to rely on Amazon. And increasingly annoyed at them for failing to relist Macmillan's books. It's like they want to make it my problem.

Still, I think I'll be using B&N for my large-scale buying now. They seem to always carry most everything in print...and Amazon can't be counted on for that anymore.

In short: no.

I am about to remove all the Amazon buy buttons from my website as soon as my webmaster gets back from a vacation. See, Amazon--two can play this game!

Jane

a of all) much gratitude to you, Teresa, for the shout out and the link. i wrote the post simply to be snarky about stress, & all the sentiments of support have been tremendously encouraging.

b of all) very humbled and--as the teen patients are wont to say--‘stoked’ that the article helped facilitate dialogue about the hopefully now-subsiding yet still dangerous disease of Macmillamazonopenia.

c of all) Jane Yolen responded to a post that is tangentially related to me. ::squeeeeeeeeeee!::

You might also want to find out who in your library is in charge of ordering books, and then talk directly to that person. (Squeaky wheel is more likely to get the oil when the person who hears it has the oil can.) Except in very, very small libraries it's probably not the person who checks your books in and out.