Not boycotting Amazon

[avram]

So, yeah, big Amazon-Macmillan dustup. Story in The NY Times. Various perspectives:

• Patrick on Making Light
• John Scalzi
• Cory Doctorow
• Nick Mamatas
• Jim Henley, and more
• Roz Kaveney

I’m not planning on boycotting Amazon, or emptying out my wishlist, or anything dramatic like that. I’m also not planning on boycotting Macmillan, or snubbing my friends at Tor.

A few thoughts:

• As Henley points out, this dispute is costing both companies money, which means it probably won’t last long.
• As Doctorow points out, this is just the sort of thing you’d expect to happen when a major book retailer is also heavily invested in an ebook-reading platform.
• As Mamatas points out, book publishers are in this for the money too.
• As Kaveney points out, Macmillan isn’t above pushing people around when they can get away with it and it profits them.

The point that I’m not sure anyone’s made explicitly: The other big publishers don’t seem to have any trouble with Amazon’s ebook pricing. And I know — from having heard grumbling about it — that Macmillan was somewhat slow about embracing the idea of ebook publishing. Henley’s “tough love” theory seems plausible to me.

I have been casting my eyes longingly over in this direction, while thinking about how much more comfortable my apartment would be with fewer dead-tree books around.

Comments

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

It'd be the rapture for books!

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Singularity. Rapture. Food for thought... Maybe I'll spend the day playing Chairman Yang and Sister Miriam in Alpha Centauri.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Amazon involved the writers, when they didn't have to. That's behind my beef.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

"The other big publishers don’t seem to have any trouble with Amazon’s ebook pricing."

You don't know that. All you can say for sure is that MacMillan forced the issue first.

[jimhenley.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I'd rate the chances that the rest of the Big Six don't demand the same basic agency deal as pretty small, now that Macmillan has made it stick.