In today’s Morning Links, I highlighted a GigaOM writeup on the latest Authors United tomfoolery: a letter to Amazon where they assert, among other things, that while Amazon does have the perfect right to refuse to stock or carry any ‘commercial good’ they want, they should not exercise this right on books because books are a special snowflake and not just a regular consumer good. Their letter says this:
“Amazon has every right to refuse to sell consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler. We all appreciate discounted razor blades and cheaper shoes. But books are not consumer goods. Books cannot be written more cheaply, nor can authors be outsourced to China. Books are not toasters or televisions. Each book is the unique, quirky creation of a lonely, intense, and often expensive struggle on the part of a single individual.”
GigaOM’s emphatic rebuttal, citing the inimitable Joe Konrath amongst other points of evidence, points out some fallacies in this argument. But what they fail to do is make what is for me the clincher argument of them all, and that is this: book production may not benefit from widgetization. But book SELLING does. This is the point many authors fail to realize—that you can’t conflate the two things. And when you separate them out, you can do each one of them better.
I would never argue that the creation of, say, a razor blade is the same in any way to the creation of a book. One product involves engineering, by a team of scientists at a large corporation. The other is a more solitary act creation spear-headed by a lone person who may collaborate on certain aspects—cover art, for instance—but it really the brains behind a fairly solo effort. I agree with Authors United on that part.
But I think that, if you treat the sales aspect as a separate process, you’ll see that books and razor blades really do have an awful lot in common as a consumer good. Once you have your end product, the amount of creation effort that went into it takes a backseat and your goal becomes to move as many units of that product as you possibly can. Why is that not as true for authors selling a book? I would even argue that authors have an advantage over the razor blade people because a digital product has requires no time cost, material cost or author involvement to replicate ad infinitum once it’s properly for sale at the store.
I think it’s fair for authors to say you cannot compare the ‘creation’ of a book with the ‘creation’ of a razor blade. But I do think many of them would actually sell more product of they treated their end product as a widget, the same as any other kind.
I beg to disagree. The retail aspect of writing simply can’t be separated from the writing. A writer whose efforts to find readers is stymied by Amazon’s attempts to bully publishers is as effectively muzzled as one who must acquire a king’s stamp of approval to publish. Author’s United is right. Amazon’s behavior really is an assault on writers and should be treated as such.
The fact that Amazon only intends to bully Hachette and a host of other media companies here and abroad is beside the point. The measure of an individual and an organization is always shown by what they refuse to do achieve their goals. Those with ethics don’t do things because they’re wrong, even if those things would help them win a dispute.
For a parallel, think of a company that, to add teeth to its dispute with a labor union decides to treat its workers badly, cutting the hours of even non-union workers. The company might regard that as merely a side-effect of its dispute with the union. Most of us would think otherwise. This is the same thing but with writers.
That’s why the First Amendment includes both a individual activity, freedom of speech, and a collective activity, freedom of press. But keep in mind that this isn’t ‘censorship’ by Amazon. Only a government can censor. The fact that I don’t buy and put your book on the shelves of my bookstore or my personal library isn’t censorship.
But Amazon’s behavior does hint at what many of us suspect, that the company comes up lacking in broader social and ethical values. It attaches no more importance for free speech and a free press than, in the example you use, it does to freedom to shave and the sale of razors. Books are, for Amazon, simply another item to sale. It takes the hindering their sale no more seriously than it would razor blades in a dispute with Gillette.
Authors United is right. That is Amazon. What this dispute provides us with is a chance to peer deeply into the corporate soul of Amazon. What we’re seeing there is not pretty and, given Amazon’s enormous size, more than a little disturbing.
Never forget that removing Buy Now buttons or delaying shipment isn’t the only thing Amazon can do to impact what authors get heard and what ones don’t. It can and already does shape search results for financial ends, mostly higher profits. It can do the same for political points of view it likes or dislikes.
There’s a book out that explores this issue on a larger scale: The New Class Conflict by Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban studies. Here’s the summary:
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In ways not seen since the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth century, America is becoming a nation of increasingly sharply divided classes. Joel Kotkin’s The New Class Conflict breaks down these new divisions for the first time, focusing on the ascendency of two classes: the tech Oligarchy, based in Silicon Valley; and the Clerisy, which includes much of the nation’s policy, media, and academic elites.
The New Class Conflict is written largely from the point of view of those who are, to date, the losers in this class conflict: the middle class. This group, which Kotkin calls the Yeomanry, has been the traditional bulwark of American society, politics, and economy. Yet under pressure from the ascendant Oligarchs and ever more powerful Clerisy, their prospects have diminished the American dream of class mobility that has animated its history and sustained its global appeal.
This book is both a call to arms and a unique piece of analysis about the possible evolution of our society into an increasingly quasi-feudal order. Looking beyond the conventional views of both left and right, conservative and liberal, Kotkin provides a tough but evenhanded analysis of our evolving class system, and suggests some approaches that might restore the middle class to its proper role as the dominant group in the American future.
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One Yeoman target are blue collar males with good paying jobs. Environmentalism, a part of the Clerisy, targets many of those jobs—in fact almost every industry it targets is filled with those jobs, logging, construction, and fishing for example. It even hates their hobbies (i.e hunting).
Google is targeting another band of the blue-collar with their self-driving cars. The idea makes no sense as it is being presented by Google. It’d be more trouble than it’s worth to program my car to back out of the garage, drive to a supermarket a mile away, and park. But it makes excellent sense for eliminating well-paying jobs in trucking and package delivery. That’s the put-upon Yeomanry of Kotkin’s book.
Here distinctions matter. Amazon shouldn’t be regarded as supporting a Yeomanry of independent authors, They are part of the tech Oligarchy. As I point out over and over, Amazon’s attitude toward authors resembles that of lord for his serfs. It lays down a host of rules to shape behavior because it assumes authors are stupid. Price as book at $1.99 or $10.99 and it only pays 35% royalties. Price it in the range Lord Amazon approves, $2.99-9.99 and the lord will, in his benevolence, pay 70%.
And yes, I fully realize that there are those who like to be lorded over. Like a bitterness about publishers who didn’t recognize their genius, it’s one of the chief causes of Amazon fanboyism among authors. They want Amazon’s warm and sheltering cocoon. They’re willing to give up liberty for what they think is security.
And they are sadly deceived.
–Michael W. Perry, co-author a Lily’s Ride: Rescuing her Father from the Klan (about an early cotton planter/Democratic party alliance)
Publishers are trapped by the cheapness of their product. Book prices in the days before the conglomerate publishers were artificially low, and they’ve remained so despite some people’s belief that they are too expensive.
Most manufactured goods have an incredible profit margin. Furniture, for example, has a 500% to 1000% profit margin which allows huge discounts with plenty of profit for everyone. Book publishing’s profit margin in 3% to 7% according to recent figures I’ve seen.
Amazon and all those screaming that books are too expensive should consider this when they demand more profit and cheaper books.
As we say in the American South, you can’t squeeze blood out of turnip, and book publishing is one seriously mangled turnip these days.
Marilyn,
Almost all of that manufacturing is about to go through the same disruption that music/publishing has gone through with 3D printing.
2 examples from the library:
A woman needed an artificial thumb. The hospital wanted to charge $10,000 for a prosthetic one. We printed it for her at the library for free.
A plumber came in needing a specific joint. He brought in the broken one, scanned it and printed one out. Saved a couple of days from being shipped from the specialty shop.
As the technology matures and more people understand how to access it manufacturers are going to be very worried.
@Michael, if Amazon as a company “the company comes up lacking in broader social and ethical values” then it is up to you as a seller to make that choice. What are your ethical values?
Are profits more important to you and so you sell on Amazon?
@Michael
I write novels and publish them on Amazon (KDP). I find it remarkable that you say “one who must acquire a king’s stamp of approval to publish”, implying that the king is Amazon. Since you are published with a university press, it may not have occurred to you that there has always been a king. Publishing houses and agents have ruled, and perhaps even censored, what was published and what was not. I’m hard pressed to see the difference, other than when publishers threw their weight around it was on your behalf. Now that there is an opening for other writers, you cry foul.
The information you are sadly lacking, though, is that we here in the U.S. are capitalists. Markets change. There is chaos. Winners and losers ascend and descend. Amazon has a broad market share and I’ll be interested to watch other retailers or publishers come up with better ideas and and grab their own piece of the market. In the mean time, if you don’t like Amazon’s morals (?) sell your books elsewhere. No one is twisting anyone’s arm.
I’m not sure you realize how condescending you come across in your comments. This is particularly insulting:
“And yes, I fully realize that there are those who like to be lorded over. Like a bitterness about publishers who didn’t recognize their genius, it’s one of the chief causes of Amazon fanboyism among authors. They want Amazon’s warm and sheltering cocoon. They’re willing to give up liberty for what they think is security.”
I’m so glad you can rise above all the bitterness of inept authors like myself that live in Amazon’s shadow and are happy to be put upon. Jeez.