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But What If You Ignore Amazon?

What if you decide not to deal with Amazon? What if publishers decide not to deal with Amazon? What— Salon does a thought experiment.

Occasionally I’ve asked book publishers if they’ve ever considered a turnabout: withholding their books from Amazon until Amazon makes some concessions. They always insist that they couldn’t withstand the short-term financial hit such a move would entail. They surely know the reality of their own bottom lines far better than I do, and they certainly haven’t gotten the same free pass from Wall Street that Amazon has enjoyed over the past couple of years. (Amazon made a tiny profit at the end of last year, but mostly it has lost money as its stock price soared; long-overdue outside pressure to perform better is likely behind these recent shenanigans.)

Writing Us All a Future

The Atlantic on why we need more nonwhite, non-male, nonstandard Sf & F heros.

I won’t go so far as to say that creators have a responsibility to do so. But I do submit that our increasingly global society offers an unprecedented opportunity for all creators to write what we don’t know. The defining heroic journey of the 20th century was to conquer evil: the Nothing, Sauron, the Harkonnens. But the defining heroic journey of the 21st century will be to reconcile the Other with the Self.

Consider the Future of the Agency Model

Publishers Weekly has a look at the future of the agency model, as the playing field changes radically.

For now, Hachette is a bellwether: potentially the first publisher to decide, post-settlement, whether to hold the line on e-book agency pricing, and to endure the stick of Amazon’s retaliation, without knowing whether the other publishers will reach for the carrot.

Quatermass And the Pit

On the Way

The Demon

The Hand

Another Organization for Authors

Publishers Weekly talks with Pamela Samuelson about the new Authors Alliance which will be formally lauched on May 21th.

"The Authors Alliance has both inward facing and outward facing roles. The inward facing role is to provide authors with information about copyrights, licensing agreements, alternative contract terms, the pros and cons of open access, the reversion of rights, and the termination of transfer. A lot of people who have works from 10 or 15 years ago that they want to make more widely available don’t necessarily know that much about copyright and licensing."

What's at Stake?

As Amazon negotiates with major publishers, what's at stake for consumers? For Writers? Publishers Weekly has some thoughts.

Industry insiders, however, see this latest fight as symptomatic of a larger, pressing issue: the ongoing battle to maintain a diverse retail marketplace.

Amazon Presses Publishers

Publishers Weekly reports:

—another major publisher was in tough negotiations with the retailer over sales terms. Among the issues on the table between Amazon and HBG are details of new e-book terms, sources familiar with the matter said. Industry insiders, however, see this latest fight as symptomatic of a larger, pressing issue: the ongoing battle to maintain a diverse retail marketplace.

Central to both disputes, and possibly others not yet public, is that the settlement on ebook price fixing will end this fall for those publishers who agreed to the court's terms.

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