I’m backing Amazon on this one

The long-running dispute between French publishers Hachette and Amazon rumbles on. More than 900 authors calling themselves Authors United recently signed a full-page open letter published in The New York Times calling on Amazon to “stop damaging authors” through its policies and suggesting that readers join the protest by sending an email directly to Jeff Bezos email.

Amazon responded with its own open letter, this time signed by Readers United, providing the email of Hachette’s CEO Michael Pietsch, and inviting readers to contact him directly with a CC to Amazon asking him to accept the lower ebook prices that Amazon is calling for. This is not the first time that Amazon has had problems with publishers over the price of ebooks: in January 2010 the company withdrew Macmillan’s titles, although the publisher eventually succeeded in selling its books at above the $9.99 price Amazon wanted. Almost two years later, along with other publishers and Apple it was fined by the US anti-trust authorities for price rigging.

I made my support of Amazon’s position clear then (link in Spanish), and am doing the same now. Leaving aside Amazon’s reference to George Orwell in its letter, as a user and a customer I feel that it is Amazon that is best defending my interests by redefining the value chain in my favor, rather than a bunch of publishers who are clearly trying to keep a significant slice of the cake for themselves. As did the record companies, the publishers are now trying to enlist the support of the writers signed up to them, but whichever way I look at the matter, the price structure and margins that Amazon is proposing makes more sense and is sustainable, providing not only greater access to books, but incentivizes us to buy more books more often.

Amazon has every right to see the price of ebooks as an important part of its plans for the future. The company is putting a great deal at stake by trying to create an environment in which books are easily accessible at low prices so that we can all have virtual book collections covering a huge range of topics. When the publishers continue with their policy of putting a price on titles based on the old value chain all they are doing is trying to justify their existence and structures on models that are long out of date. They may think that they can get away with this in the context of the free market, but from the same perspective, so is Amazon free to exclude them from its sales outlet.

Which is not to say that Amazon’s decision is without risk: obviously people expect to find the big authors on its website. Excluding books published by such a major publishers could create problems for the company. The public may end up siding with what it sees as the “poor little publishers being pushed around by the big e-commerce bully,” when the reality is that these same publishers pay their authors a tiny percentage of the price of a book, based on a business model where many of the traditional costs that pricing was based on no longer apply. These guys are not called “big five” for no reason. And the more they consolidate, the worst I see things for me, both as a reader and as an author.

I’m sorry, but when I see writers siding with their publishers in disputes like this, I think Stockholm Syndrome. If Amazon wants to impose its conditions, those that it believes are essential to the future of its business model, at the risk of the big publishers pulling out of its sales platform, then that seems like a valid tactic, and puts the ball in the publishers’ court. As a writer myself, a dispute of this nature would rule Hachette out as a possible publisher of my work, and I would prefer to go to another with better criteria when it comes to distributing me; or I might simply choose to publish myself on Amazon, with all the pros and cons involved. At the end of the day, Amazon is trying to bring writers and readers together, whereas the publishers are trying to hold on to their position as middlemen, and charging as much as possible. Amazon reduces friction, Hachette wants to increase friction and charge for it.

I am far from being the only person to support Amazon in this particular dispute, but neither do I always support Amazon: on previous occasions I have complained about its practices. As both a writer and a reader, I am backing Amazon on this one, and its arguments in favor of making books more accessible sound far more reasonable than Hachette’s, whose authors are effectively being held hostage. Amazon may not be a charity, but in this war, I think I have more to benefit by joining its cause.

And what’s more, I can’t wait to see the outcome of the next battle.

(En español, aquí)