Some Jerks (Probably The NFL) Got A Hilarious Romance Novel Parody Removed From Amazon Over IP

from the gronk-gronk-gronk dept

I'm a big fan of fan fiction for several reasons. I think it's awesome how a community can be so devoted to a particular something as to want to author their own creations around that something. I think it's cool when the original creators manage to use fan fiction as a mode to interact with their fans. Perhaps most of all, I love how fan fiction allows creative people to get silly on the subject of their work with parody and humor. For these reasons and more, I was particularly pleased when Amazon announced that they wanted to allow sales of this kind of work.

I'm less pleased to find that there are many ways in which those works can be taken down. See, Lacey Noonan is an author who goes out of her way to create parody novellas making fun of the romance genre. She recently released her short book about a housewife wanting to have sex with an NFL player.

Yes, the story quite prominently features Rob Gronkowski, New England Patriots tight end, and general all-around party boy. You know, this friggin' guy.

Yo soy fiesta. Yo soy fiesta. I am party. That's as Gronkowski as it gets. And it makes him a great subject for a laughable romance novella parody. Unfortunately, A Gronking To Remember has been removed from the Amazon store. Why? You see that small patch on Gronk's sleeve on the cover of the book that reads "MHK"? It's a tribute patch for the wife of the Patriot's owner and it appears to be the reason the book was taken down.

We're told the online retailer pulled the book because someone — perhaps the Patriots or the National Football League — objected to the book jacket, specifically the photo of Gronkowski that features the "MHK" patch on his uniform. (The team began wearing the patch in 2011 after the death Myra Kraft, wife of Patriots owner Robert Kraft.) In an e-mail, author Lacey Noonan told us she hadn't anticipated any problem with the Gronk picture.

"I didn't understand at the outset that Robert Kraft wouldn't want Myra Kraft and her philanthropical works associated with this," Noonan said in the e-mail. "Total newbie ignorance on my part. I believe — and hope — that's the only problem anyone has with the book since it is such obvious satire and parody."

If you look at the cover with an eye towards intellectual property concerns, you can clearly see how the team or the NFL might have concerns over the team's uniform appearing on the jacket, though it also seems clear that measures were taken to minimize how much the team logo and the uniform appears at all. But for this to be over the patch? And for that patch to result in the takedown of a hilarious piece of parody? It seems that someone needs to explain what rights exist for whom on a patch that consists of three letters, because we can't lose this literary treasure to that.

Filed Under: copyright, ebooks, fan fiction, lacey noonan, rob gronkowski, takedown, trademark
Companies: nfl

Torture Report A Best Seller On Kindle, Despite Being Available For Free (And In The Public Domain)

from the you-can-compete-with-free dept

"You can't compete with free!" is the mantra of a number of copyright maximalists -- and no matter how many times we show them examples of people successfully competing with free, it's still taken as inviolable law by some. Yet, here we are with yet another example of it happening anyway. As you know, last week the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released its CIA torture report (or, rather, the redacted version of the executive summary of the full report). It is a gripping read, and you can read the whole thing here (or embedded below). We can post it here for a variety of reasons, including the fact that the document is in the public domain, as a work of the federal government.

A little over ten years ago, we noted that the famed 9/11 Commission Report, despite also being in the public domain, had become a best seller in its printed version -- even though it, too, was in the public domain. It appears something similar is happening with the CIA torture report. There is a Kindle version that costs $2.99, and despite the report being available as a PDF (which can be viewed on Kindle), the fee-based version of the torture report is the number one seller in the "intelligence & espionage" section (beating out James Risen's recent book Pay Any Price). And this is happening despite the fact that people on Amazon are warning people not to buy the fee-based Kindle version, posting comments to tell them it's just a PDF that's available for free.

Yet, it appears that the convenience factor has made it worthwhile to an awful lot of people, who are willing to pay the money rather than figure out how to get the PDF onto their kindle. As we've pointed out for years, things like convenience and ease-of-use are real selling points -- and it's why things like Netflix and Spotify have been shown to decrease infringement -- because it's worth paying a little extra for a better-to-use system.

Meanwhile, physical copies of the CIA torture report are being rushed out with at least one publisher, Melville House, saying it will be out by the end of the year -- though, I'd imagine others will follow suit. In Michele Boldrin and David Levine's book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, they have a fascinating discussion on how publisher W.W. Norton made out wonderfully in being the first to publish a hard copy of the 9/11 Commission Report, despite not having to pay any copyright royalties:

The 81-year-old publisher struck an unusual publishing deal with the 9/11 commission back in May: Norton agreed to issue the paperback version of the report on the day of its public release.…Norton did not pay for the publishing rights, but had to foot the bill for a rush printing and shipping job; the commission did not hand over the manuscript until the last possible moment, in order to prevent leaks. The company will not reveal how much this cost, or when precisely it obtained the report. But expedited printings always cost extra, making it that much more difficult for Norton to realize a profit.

In addition, the commission and Norton agreed in May on the 568-page tome's rather low cover price of $10, making it that much harder for the publisher to recoup its costs. (Amazon.com is currently selling copies for $8 plus shipping, while visitors to the Government Printing Office bookstore in Washington, D.C. can purchase its version of the report for $8.50.) There is also competition from the commission's Web site, which is offering a downloadable copy of the report for free. And Norton also agreed to provide one free copy to the family of every 9/11 victim.

As Boldrin and Levine point out, according to copyright system supporters, this situation couldn't possibly work out. After all, Norton is agreeing to publish a work that anyone can get for free, and which any other publisher (including the federal government) can offer for sale at a lower price. In fact, the book notes, a rival publisher, St. Martin's, teamed up with the NY Times and got a second physical copy on the market just a couple of weeks after Norton's physical copy, and priced it at $8.50. Clearly, Norton got a bad deal, right? And yet, Norton sold 1.1 million copies of the book, and donated $600,000 in "profits" from the book to charity. But, you know, you can't compete with free (and public domain).

Filed Under: best seller, cia, cia torture report, compete with free, copyright, ebooks, free, kindle, public domain, torture report

Amazon And Hachette Bury The Hatchet -- It's Just Not Clear In Whom

from the moving-on dept

For the past few months, we've been following the whole Amazon / Hachette contract dispute that was full of ridiculous misinformation and economic ignorance. It was interesting to see such a fight play out in public, though it was also a reminder that oftentimes, such public fights become public due to misinformation campaigns.

Either way, the two companies have, well, buried the hatchet, though, as Nate Hoffelder points out, it's not clear in whose back it got buried. Hoffelder does note that from what's being said about the deal, it doesn't appear to be all that different from the one that Amazon recently signed with Simon & Schuster -- without such public anguish -- leading him to wonder what Hachette could have possibly gotten out of going toe-to-toe with Amazon in this battle in such a public manner.

In the end, it seemed like another fight about control and the future -- and, generally speaking, Hachette's desire to stave off where things are heading in the future for as long as possible. But, and this is the important bit, the future has a way of always winning out in the end, no matter how hard you negotiate against it.

Filed Under: books, contract, ebooks
Companies: amazon, hachette

How Publishers & Copyright Gave Amazon The Very Power That Publishers Now Hate

from the which-was-totally-predictable dept

We've been meaning to weigh in some more on the whole Amazon/Hachette battle, because lot of misinformation has been spewed around (including by Paul Krugman). Unfortunately there have just been too many other things to cover and we haven't had the time to do a more thorough piece. However, Tim Lee, over at Vox, has a good short piece detailing how many of the publishers' problems are really because of copyright law and the stupid DRM that the publishers themselves demanded -- and which now gives Amazon its power over them in the market. The issue? The DMCA and the fact that Section 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent any DRM (even if for non-infringing purposes). End result, all those books on Amazon are stuck on Amazon.

Amazon has taken advantage of the DMCA too. Kindle books come copy-protected so that only Amazon-approved software can read it without breaking the law. Of course, software to convert it to other formats exists, but it's illegal and accordingly isn't very convenient or user-friendly.

And that creates a huge barrier to entry. People who want to create new e-reader apps or devices can't do what MP3 startups did in the 1990s and offer to automatically import your existing e-books from Kindle, iTunes, or other major platforms. Instead, they have to start from scratch, creating their own e-book store and convincing all the major publishers to sign up for it.

Even more daunting, they have to convince customers to toss their existing e-book libraries and buy new copies of their e-books on the new platform — or split their time between multiple platforms.

The thing is, none of this is even remotely surprising. Almost six years ago, we warned book publishers of this exact scenario. This wasn't hard to predict, because the same damn thing had happened in music, before Apple finally dumped its music DRM. But no one listens to us.

And yet, you can bet that if changing the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA is up for discussion during the next effort at copyright reform, the book publishers and their lobbyists will actually be among the most vocal about keeping it the way it is. They still don't seem to recognize how their own demands for DRM created the situation they're so worried about today with Amazon having more power than the publishers like.

Filed Under: anti-circumvention, copyright, dmca, dmca 1201, drm, ebooks, lock-in, publishers
Companies: amazon

Adobe Discovers Encryption, Cuts Back On Its eBook Snooping A Bit

from the drm-is-bad,-mmkay? dept

The whole DRM for ebooks effort is still pretty braindead all around. It's amazing to me that everyone hasn't realized what the music industry figured out years ago (after many earlier years of kicking and screaming): DRM doesn't help the creators or the copyright holders in the slightest. It pisses off end users and tends to help give platform providers a dominant position by creating lock-in with their users. Time and time again we see copyright holders demanding DRM, not realizing that this demand actually gives all the leverage to the platform provider. And, of course, there are all the technical problems with DRM, from making "purchased" content disappear once DRM servers are turned off, to making it more difficult to actually use legitimately authorized content, to the fact that DRM tends to lead to privacy and security problems as well.

A few weeks ago, Nate Hoffelder discovered that Adobe's ebook reader, Digital Editions 4, was spying on your ebooks, collecting a ton of information about them, and then uploading it all to Adobe's servers in an unencrypted format, potentially revealing a lot of information about users of the product. Adobe came out with a ridiculously mealy-mouthed response that clearly had been worked over by a crisis team PR person, when what it should have done is say, "Uh, we screwed up."

Now, a couple of weeks later, Adobe has quietly updated Digital Edition, complete with encryption... and with greatly reduced snooping. It no longer does anything on non-DRM'd ebooks, only contacting the server for DRM'd books (which, as explained, is a dumb idea, but...). So, Adobe has corrected the egregious errors of its original snooping (though, frankly, the company should also (1) apologize to the public and (2) thank Hoffelder for pointing out the company's crappy practices).

Hoffelder goes even further, arguing that what Adobe should really do is stop the data collection entirely:

This is less a case of a company screwing up in supporting users than it is one of a major tech company grabbing more user info than is required and then, when they are caught, trying to write it off with a “My bad” and a promise to add encryption.

That is entirely the wrong response. What they should have said was that they would stop the spying, not that they would make it more difficult for the world to listen in.

From all appearances, the real problem here is... DRM. Adobe's designed a DRM system that requires a server check-in to make it work. This is dumb for a variety of reasons, and also means that when -- inevitably -- the server goes away, those "purchased" works are likely to disappear as well.

Filed Under: digital editions, drm, ebooks, encryption
Companies: adobe

Adobe's Half-Assed Response To Spying On All Your eBooks

from the that's-not-gonna-do-it dept

Yesterday, we mentioned the reports kicked off by Nate Hoffelder's research that Adobe was spying on your ebook reading efforts and (even worse) sending the details as unencrypted plaintext. Adobe took its sweet time, but finally responded late last night (obnoxiously, Adobe refused to respond directly to Hoffelder at all, despite the fact that he broke the story). Here's Adobe's mealy-mouthed response that was clearly worked over by a (poorly trained) crisis PR team:

Adobe Digital Editions allows users to view and manage eBooks and other digital publications across their preferred reading devices—whether they purchase or borrow them. All information collected from the user is collected solely for purposes such as license validation and to facilitate the implementation of different licensing models by publishers. Additionally, this information is solely collected for the eBook currently being read by the user and not for any other eBook in the user’s library or read/available in any other reader. User privacy is very important to Adobe, and all data collection in Adobe Digital Editions is in line with the end user license agreement and the Adobe Privacy Policy.

Some of the research into what's going on contradicts the claims of it only looking at books "currently being read," but even if that's true, it doesn't make the snooping any less disturbing. And while it may be true that Adobe has not violated its privacy policy (though, that's arguable), it really just highlights the stupidity of the concept of privacy policies. As we've noted in the past, the only way you get in trouble on privacy is if you violate your own privacy policy. And thus, the incentives are to write a policy that says "we collect absolutely everything, and do whatever we want with it, nyah, nyah, nyah," because that way you won't ever violate it. Since no one reads the policy anyway, and most people assume having a "policy" means protecting privacy (even if it says the opposite), privacy policies (and laws that require them) are often counterproductive. This situation appears to be a perfect example of that in action.

Either way, the response is tone deaf in the extreme. Even if it's "in line" with the privacy policy, does that make it right or acceptable? Adobe makes no effort to respond to the concerns about this snooping on reading habits -- which can be quite revealing. It makes no effort to respond to the serious problems of sending this info in plaintext, creating a massive security hole for private information.

While Adobe has told some that it is working on an update to "address" the issue of transmitting the data in plaintext, it's a bit late in the process to be recognizing that's an issue. The Ars Technica article notes that this may, in fact, violate New Jersey's Reader Privacy Act. EFF wonders about the similar California Reader Privacy Act and whether or not Adobe's efforts here completely undermine that law.

Since Adobe's Digital Editions are commonly used by libraries (my local library uses it, which I've used to take out ebooks), it really raises some serious questions for those libraries. Librarians have a history of strongly standing up for the protection of reader privacy. In fact, for all the talk we've had recently about Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and how the NSA abuses it, when it was first passed, the people who protested the loudest were the librarians, who feared that it would be used to collect records on what books people were reading! Some people even referred to it as the "library records" provision (even though it was eventually twisted into much more).

And yet, here we are, a decade or so later, and Adobe has completely undermined this kind of trust and privacy which libraries pride themselves on. And, even worse, it's all in the name of some crappy DRM that publishers demand. Librarians and readers should be up in arms over this, and looking for alternatives. Adobe should stop with the bullshit crisis PR response and admit that they screwed up and that the product needs to change to better protect the privacy of individuals and their reading habits.

Filed Under: copyright, digital reader, drm, ebooks, encryption, libraries, privacy, snooping
Companies: adobe

Is Adobe's Ebook Reader Spying On What You Read -- And What You Have On Your Computer?

from the and-sending-your-data-in-cleartext-too? dept

Ebooks have many advantages, but as Techdirt has reported in the past, there are dangers too, particularly in a world of devices routinely connected to the Net. Back in 2010, we wrote about how Amazon was remotely uploading information about the user notes and highlights you took on your Kindle. More recently, we reported on how a school was using electronic versions of textbooks to spy on students as they read them. Against that background, you would have thought by now that companies would be sensitive to these kinds of issues. But if Nate Hoffelder is right, there's a big privacy problem with Adobe's Digital Editions 4, its free ebook reading app. Here's what Hoffelder writes on his blog, The Digital Reader:

Adobe is tracking users in the app and uploading the data to their servers. (Adobe was contacted in advance of publication, but declined to respond.)

Specifically:

Adobe is gathering data on the ebooks that have been opened, which pages were read, and in what order. All of this data, including the title, publisher, and other metadata for the book is being sent to Adobe’s server in clear text.

Yes, not only is the app spying on you, but it is sending personal information unencrypted over the Net. And it seems that this is not just about the ebook you are currently reading:

Adobe isn't just tracking what users are doing in DE4; this app was also scanning my computer, gathering the metadata from all of the ebooks sitting on my hard disk, and uploading that data to Adobe’s servers.

These are all serious accusations, and completely unacceptable if confirmed. At the very least, an independent investigation by Ars Technica has now confirmed all of the important details, though Adobe has still stayed silent. However, this also highlights why many people prefer to use pirated editions without DRM, which can be read on any suitable software: not because they're free, but because they're better products in just about every way -- for example, in respecting your privacy.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: digital editions, ebooks, spying, spyware
Companies: adobe

DRM Performs Another Miracle, Turns Purchased Childrens Books Into Nothing At All

from the the-magic-of-technology,-in-Biblical-terms dept

An anonymous Techdirt reader sends in the now-unsurprising news that another publisher and its DRM are declaring customers' purchased e-goods null and void. This time it's Scholastic, publisher of many youth and teen titles, as well as the long-running host of numerous parental wallet-emptying book fairs.

According to Scholastic's 2012 press release, Storia (the DRMed ebook collection currently affected) allowed students and teachers to purchase ebooks and share them with up to 10 family members/students via its proprietary app. (The app is the DRM. Scholastic purchases don't work outside of it. To quote its now-vanished FAQs page: "Storia eBooks are designed with unique learning features and enrichments that make them readable only while using the Storia eReading app.") It also included enhanced content to encourage readers to dig deeper into unfamiliar subjects and allow teachers to connect with downloaded books via Smartboards and other computers. All in all, not a terrible product and one that comes from a particularly trusted name in academic publishing.

That's all coming to an end now. Scholastic has placed this notice on its website.

On September 1st, Scholastic is switching to what it calls a "streaming model." Readers and educators will have access to 2,000 titles, but they will no longer be allowed to own any of them. In fact, without an internet connection, they'll be unable to read them at all, a "feature" purchased ebooks didn't have. Instead, teachers and parents will pay a flat yearly fee to access these titles. Because of this switch, the license aspect of ebooks (something that's always present in digital goods) becomes explicit, rather than lurking in the background waiting to deny someone the privilege of selling or transferring an item they purchased (which Scholastic already prevented with its proprietary software).

At least Scholastic is being upfront about what's happening to people's purchases.

The switch to streaming means that eBooks you've previously purchased may soon no longer be accessible.

That's the bad news. You don't own what you buy, not if it's a license rather than a sale. See also: numerous other examples.

But Scholastic is at least trying to mitigate the damage. Some purchases will stay active in users' accounts if customers follow this one simple trick. (Sorry.)

You may be able to continue using your eBooks by making sure to open them on a bookshelf at least once by October 15.

Unfortunately, there's that troublesome word "may" stuck right in the middle of the damage control. Scholastic's site offers no odds on which books will still work and which purchased items will simply vanish. This is likely due to further licensing agreements behind the scenes -- those between Scholastic and authors/other publishers. (Scholastic handles book fair distribution for high-powered franchises like Harry Potter and Goosebumps.) Chances are, the bigger the title, the greater the likelihood of this maneuver not working. Just as Netflix streaming is 90% stuff no one wants to watch, a switch to an unlimited access streaming service will likely result in a.) the disappearance of titles whose upstream publishers are asking for increased licensing fees or b.) the increased upstream licensing fees pricing Scholastic out of many schools/parents' budgets.

But Scholastic is going further than most companies in the same position would, and doing it proactively (rather than waiting for the angry wisdom of the crowd to shame them into acting like they care).

Upon your request, we will refund the cost of all Storia eBooks you've purchased. Call Customer Service at 1-855-STORIA1 by August 1, 2015.

This in itself sets Scholastic ahead of many others who have simply issued the universal "licensing is out of our hands" shrug and pulled the plug on customers' purchases. So, kudos are in order for Scholastic (especially considering customers have more than a year to obtain their refunds), even if this switch to streaming sounds like it will benefit Scholastic more than its customers. A better decision would have been to keep both options. Educators -- which is who this new streaming service seems to be aimed at -- could take the subscription route while parents and kids could have kept their purchases (and potentially purchased even more ebooks). This one-size-fits-all approach takes books away from paying customers. A refund is nice, but having the right to keep your purchased items is even better.

[Postscript: One rep for Scholastic doesn't seem very interested in the public being made aware of this change outside of the splash page that now greets people looking to purchase Storia ebooks. Nate Hoffelder of the Digital Reader was approached by Kyle Good, Scholastic's Corporate Communications SVP, and asked why he wasn't going to remove his post on Storia after issuing a correction an earlier error. Good seems to believe this correction negated everything about Hoffelder's post (something Hoffelder admittedly stated before digging deeper into Storia's pivot to streaming) and asked in shocked Twitter tones why he hadn't.

This is Internet 101. Posts don't come down because of errors. Errors are corrected and acknowledged, but posts aren't simply removed because someone with a financial interest in the subject matter at hand thinks mistakes should result in disappearances. Storia's switch to streaming isn't completely terrible but it's certainly not a win for all of its customers. Ebooks you can only read with a solid internet connection border on useless. It may make sense in the educational market where the connection is almost guaranteed, but those outside of this system are simply losing their purchases. A refund helps, but it completely negate the damage.)

Filed Under: copyright, drm, ebooks, license, own
Companies: scholastic

Amazon To Hachette And Authors: Here, Let Us Explain Basic Price Elasticity To You

from the lower-price,-make-more-money-dimwits dept

Apparently Amazon's efforts earlier this month to make it abundantly clear that it's fight with Hachette is about helping, not harming authors still didn't quite make it through to authors who seem to reflexively hate Amazon (often for reasons that don't make much sense). So now Amazon has tried to be even more explicit, by taking the time to explain what price elasticity means, and how Amazon's plan would actually make authors more money. They lay it out pretty clearly, especially for those authors who maybe didn't do so well in economics classes:

A key objective is lower e-book prices. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out-of-stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market -- e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can be and should be less expensive.

It's also important to understand that e-books are highly price-elastic. This means that when the price goes up, customers buy much less. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000.

The important thing to note here is that at the lower price, total revenue increases 16%. This is good for all the parties involved:

• The customer is paying 33% less.
• The author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that's 74% larger. And that 74% increase in copies sold makes it much more likely that the title will make it onto the national bestseller lists. (Any author who's trying to get on one of the national bestseller lists should insist to their publisher that their e-book be priced at $9.99 or lower.)
• Likewise, the higher total revenue generated at $9.99 is also good for the publisher and the retailer. At $9.99, even though the customer is paying less, the total pie is bigger and there is more to share amongst the parties.

Keep in mind that books don't just compete against books. Books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.

So, at $9.99, the total pie is bigger - how does Amazon propose to share that revenue pie? We believe 35% should go to the author, 35% to the publisher and 30% to Amazon. Is 30% reasonable? Yes. In fact, the 30% share of total revenue is what Hachette forced us to take in 2010 when they illegally colluded with their competitors to raise e-book prices. We had no problem with the 30% -- we did have a big problem with the price increases.

Amazon then goes one step further, driving a real wedge between Hachette and authors with the following paragraph:

One more note on our proposal for how the total revenue should be shared. While we believe 35% should go to the author and 35% to Hachette, the way this would actually work is that we would send 70% of the total revenue to Hachette, and they would decide how much to share with the author. We believe Hachette is sharing too small a portion with the author today, but ultimately that is not our call.

Are there legitimate concerns that some may have about Amazon's position in the marketplace? Absolutely. But it's fight with Hachette does not seem to be about that, but rather about setting up a deal that actually does make everyone better off. It appears that Hachette has been fighting that, in this ridiculous belief that ebooks have to be priced higher -- and that it should get to keep more and more of the money.

Filed Under: authors, books, ebooks, economics, price elasticity
Companies: amazon, hachette

Amazon Offers Authors 100% Of Ebook Sales To Get Them To Recognize Its Fight With Hachette Isn't About Screwing Authors

from the wake-up-authors dept

Last week, we had a post from author Barry Eisler, responding to a bunch of other authors who were attacking Amazon over its current contract dispute with Hachette. As Eisler noted, nearly all of their complaints were either misleading or didn't make sense. There's no doubt that there's a contract dispute going on, but claims of "boycotts" and other attacks seem really directed to people misunderstanding what's going on in the dispute -- and thus, those authors are defending the traditional gatekeeper publishing model in which Hachette gets to keep nearly all of the proceeds of book sales. Of course, the authors' main "complaint" was that they felt like they were being used as pawns in the fight, and that the dispute might impact their sales directly.

To show how bogus that claim is, Amazon today went directly to Hachette authors with a proposal Amazon claims Hachette rejected: offering to give authors 100% of the proceeds on ebook sales.

The letter extends and develops a proposal Amazon made earlier in the dispute, which was dismissed by Hachette. It now offers Hachette authors “100 percent of the sales price of every Hachette e-book we sell.” Amazon also offered to suspend all its shipping delays and price adjustments, which it put in place in an effort to bend Hachette to its will.

Of course, defenders of the publishers insist that this is all a ploy for Amazon in its never-ending mission to take over the world:

Roxana Robinson, president of the Authors Guild, dismissed the proposal.

“If Amazon wants to have a constructive conversation about this, we’re ready to have one at any time,” she said in an email. “But this seems like a short-term solution that encourages authors to take sides against their publishers. It doesn’t get authors out of the middle of this – we’re still in the middle. Our books are at the center of this struggle.”

Once again, it's confusing to figure out which side the Authors Guild is really on here. Since we started covering that organization, it appears that it sides 100% with the publishers and rarely sides with what matters for the vast majority of authors.

The whole situation is quite bizarre when you think about it. At the same time you have Hachette and the Authors Guild insisting that they're trying to "protect the book" by keeping book prices artificially high, they're loudly complaining that Amazon won't discount their books. Notice some hypocrisy here? If you want to understand why this is happening, the best explanation I've seen so far comes from Hugh Howey, one of the super successful self-published authors who is firmly in Amazon's camp on this fight. Writing in the Guardian, he notes the perverse incentives of the traditional publishing world on Amazon:

Under the previous wholesale model, publishers might price an ebook at $14.99, and with the 50% discount, an online retailer like Amazon was able to discount to a more reasonable $9.99 to serve customers. Customers who expect digital books to cost less than the paperbacks with which they were familiar. With the new discount rate, Amazon stood to lose money by offering that same price. Publishers, meanwhile, were less than enthusiastic about lowering the offered wholesale discount.

Publishers like Hachette now found themselves in enviable territory. They could price ebooks high – protecting their relationship with high-street booksellers – and rely on Amazon to cut their own margin to the bone in order to move quantities of ebooks. This new situation created the bizarre scenario where authors who once complained about Amazon's discounting are now complaining that they aren't discounting enough. And during these negotiations, parties from Hachette's side are accusing Amazon of raising prices by offering something close to what the publisher itself is setting.

In a presentation to investors, Hachette has stated as a primary goal the control of ebook pricing. Breaking their habitual silence just last week, a representative from Amazon confirmed that the sticking point in these negotiations is indeed price. So both sides have confirmed what's at stake. History would indicate that Amazon thinks ebooks should cost no more than $9.99. Their agreement with self-published authors supports this, as the royalty rate paid halves if the price exceeds this amount. Hachette, meanwhile, would very much prefer to offer ebooks at $14.99 or more and leave any discounting up to Amazon (or any pain up to their customers).

In other words, everyone really knows that ebooks should be priced lower, but the old publishing world wants to be able to set much higher prices, forcing Amazon to basically make no money at all on pricing the books lower. Given this scenario, it actually makes sense for Amazon to then make this offer to authors directly: it will hand over 100% of ebook revenue, because under Hachette's proposal, Amazon would make no money at all (or even lose money) on ebook sales anyway.

Filed Under: authors, books, contractual fight, ebooks, self-publishing
Companies: amazon, hachette