An eye-opening experience
This post originally appeared in Bloomberg Technology’s newsletter Fully Charged. Subscribe here.
It’s been a long week, so I’m going to take this opportunity to share a personal story of getting caught at the invisible intersection of two of the largest tech companies in the world. It’s going to sound like a bit of a humblebrag at first but stick around few a paragraphs. There’s also, I think, a point at the end.
Early this year, I published a book, The Upstarts. As is customary, my publisher made it available as an e-book, a digital audio book and CD, a paperback for international markets and a hardcover for the U.S. There was also a large-print edition for the vision-impaired. I wouldn’t withhold from these readers this encyclopedia-sized tome with blocky print. I’m practically blind myself without corrective lenses, and reading can be hell on the eyes.
Amazon.com, which accounts for a majority of book sales these days, has separate tabs on its book pages devoted to each medium — e-book, audiobook and so on. But strangely, there isn’t a tab for the large-print edition. It exists as kind of an alternative version of the hardcover page, and you can usually only find it only if you are purposely searching for it. Ironically, and this is a crucial point, the disclaimer on this Amazon page is actually difficult to read, and it would be easy for anyone to miss that it’s the large-print edition.
Despite what you may imagine, selling a book is not always a dignified process.
Now, you can ask any author about the minor humiliations that accompany the book promotion process. They will tell you about speaking to largely empty bookstores, having TV appearances cancelled because the president tweeted something or other, and finding copies of their new masterpiece on used book websites selling for three cents plus tax and shipping. Despite what you may imagine, selling a book is not always a dignified process.
But here was something new: When The Upstarts was published, Google, the world’s most popular search engine, put the first and most prominent link in its web search results to the Amazon page selling the large-print edition.
As a result, any buyer who searched for the book title on Google and clicked the first link was transported to Amazon. If they then clicked the purchase button without looking carefully, they would receive a box at their front door a couple days later containing a monument to 18-point font that happens to be exceedingly easy on the eyes.
This became a painfully frequent occurrence. In the first few weeks after publication, I received emails from friends, family members and readers saying they had inadvertently acquired the large-print edition. Large-print sales accounted for a statistically significant percentage of overall sell-through, even though it seemed unlikely that the book held special appeal to the visually handicapped. I complained to my publisher, who tried and failed to get either Amazon or Google to fix it, even though the former is by far their largest bookselling partner.
I also brought this frustration home, where Tiffany, like every patient authorial partner throughout human history, was dutifully sympathetic about my minor ordeal. Then — and I swear I am not making this up — she, too, went and accidentally ordered the large-print edition from Amazon. The colossal paperweight sat on our living room table until I couldn’t look at it anymore and hid it in the closet.
Fast forward a few months. I spoke last week to business school students and alumni at the University of Toronto. The organizers thought of everything for this trip, including graciously purchasing some 60 books for attendees and asking me to arrive 45 minutes beforehand to sign them. So, last Monday, I arrived at the school to find — I’m sure you can see where this is going — a mountain of large-print books, each waiting for a lovingly inscribed autograph. (Apparently the organizers had searched for the book on Google, grabbed the ISBN number from that cursed first link and filed a bulk order with my publisher, which must have thought I was speaking to the Association of Canadian Bifocal Enthusiasts.)
Here’s the point: Internet giants like Amazon and Google increasingly control our lives and livelihoods. Yet, they are totally unaccountable and unavailable to address the countless little snafus that pop up on their services. It gets even worse when the problem arises in the inviolable exchange of metadata between the companies themselves, which are rivals and unlikely to work together to resolve problems.
So, I guess we are all fated to suffer these small indignities that come from their occasional carelessness. Our internet companies can be so farsighted. And the farsighted should thank them profusely.
