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Posts Tagged ‘amazon’

Amazon is at it again

The one bright spot is, people are starting to notice.

In 2008, Amazon got into a pissing contest with Hachette, the smallest of the large publishers (and owners of Orbit, who published my first four novels). In 2010, it was Macmillan (owners of Tor, my current publisher). In 2012, Penguin. And now, in 2014, we’ve wrapped back around to Hachette. Books published by subsidaries of Hachette are currently shipping “in 2 to 5 weeks” — including Warrior, Witch, Midnight Never Come, and In Ashes Lie. Is it because there’s a problem with Hachette? Are they not supplying stock to Amazon in a timely fashion?

Nope. It’s because Amazon is trying, once again, to use its market share to strong-arm publishers into accepting unfavorable terms. Unfavorable for the publishers, unfavorable for writers — and ultimately, unfavorable for readers.

This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s an ongoing pattern of behavior. It’s something people have been warning about for years, but the response has usually been that Amazon is your friend. They sell things cheaply and ship really fast (just don’t think about how they treat their employees), and hey, 70% royalties on ebooks! Except that Amazon is demonstrably willing to tank the customer experience if it will help them gain more power in the marketplace. And the more they control, the less friendly they become. They are the abusive boyfriend who systematically isolates you from everybody in your life and then, once you have nowhere else to turn, shows his true colors.

If we had better anti-trust legislation in this country, Amazon would have been stopped long before this. But we don’t, and they haven’t been.

Back when they pulled the buy buttons off Macmillan books as a “negotiating tool,” I removed the Amazon links from my website. (Mostly. Scanning the pages, I see I left the Book Depository there; I don’t know if they hadn’t yet been bought by Amazon at the time.) I’m going to go through and scrub the remainder, with two exceptions: Audible (also owned by Amazon, but they are the publisher of my audio editions) and Kindle Direct Publishing (for the BVC-published ebooks). Notice a pattern there? I’m leaving up the links where Amazon has enough power over me that I can’t just walk away from them. I don’t like it, but I don’t feel I can choose differently. More than half of my ebook sales come via Amazon, and there is no way to buy the audiobooks that doesn’t put money in their pocket.

But they don’t control everything, at least not yet. You can get my books from Barnes and Noble — ebook and print alike. They aren’t perfect, but they’re Amazon’s main competitor. Or you can buy from Powell’s. Or from IndieBound. Or Books-a-Million. Or Indigo, if you’re Canadian. You can also get my ebooks from Book View Cafe or Kobo (and by the way, if you’re the sort of person who’s motivated by Amazon’s “author-friendly” habit of paying a 70% royalty, note that Kobo pays the same, while BVC pays me a 95% royalty instead). Maybe it won’t be as convenient as Amazon; you won’t get free two-day shipping. But that convenience is the bait: they use it to shift more and more business into their hands, and then they use what they hold to change the market to benefit them.

It isn’t illegal. But it also isn’t something I care to support. There are alternatives, and I encourage you to use them.

antho update

As posted by squirrel_monkey, our esteemed editor Ekaterina Sedia:

INTRODUCTION
WILD RIDE, Carrie Vaughn
SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE, Steve Duffy
COMPARISON OF EFFICACY RATES FOR SEVEN ANTIPATHETICS AS EMPLOYED AGAINST LYCANTHROPES, Marie Brennan
BEAUTIFUL GELREESH, Jeffrey Ford
SKIN IN THE GAME, Samantha Henderson
BLENDED, C.E. Murphy
LOCKED DOORS, Stephanie Burgis
WERELOVE, Laura Anne Gilman
IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING, Molly Tanzer
ROYAL BLOODLINES, Mike Resnick
DIRE WOLF, Genevieve Valentine
TAKE BACK THE NIGHT, Lawrence Schimmel
MONGREL, Maria Snyder
DEADFALL, Karen Everson
RED RIDING HOOD’S CHILD, N.K. Jemisin
ARE YOU A VAMPIRE OR A GOBLIN? Geoffrey Goodwin
THE PACK AND THE PICKUP ARTIST, Mike Brotherton
THE GARDEN, THE MOON, THE WALL, Amanda Downum
BLAMED FOR TRYING TO LIVE, Jesse Bullington
THE BARONY AT RODAL, Peter Bell
INSIDE OUT, Erzbet Yellowboy
GESTELLA, Susan Palwick

Running with the Pack is available for pre-order now; looks like it will be released in late May.

Two things I forgot to mention

One is that for the duration of June, Midnight Never Come is available as a one-dollar e-book. You can pick up a Kindle copy at Amazon, or eReader or what have you at Fictionwise, and maybe other formats elsewhere — but the offer only lasts until the end of the month.

The other is that I will be doing a reading and signing at Borderlands Books in San Francisco tomorrow (Saturday) at 1 p.m. If you’re in the Bay Area, come on by, and hear some assortment of short stories and/or excerpts from In Ashes Lie. (I really should make a decision on what I’m reading . . . .)

Open Book Thread: In Ashes Lie

It does occur to me (now that I’m starting to get my brain back — I’ll be home this evening, yay!) that street dates are normally Tuesdays, but hey, Amazon swears blind that mine is today, and they’re never wrong, right?

Since I’m not a big enough name for bookstores to put me on the special “don’t shelve this too early or we’ll get sued” list, it doesn’t matter much one way or another. Happy Street Date for In Ashes Lie! Unless you’re in the UK, in which case I believe you have to wait just a couple of weeks longer.

Comments and questions on the book are welcome here (and you don’t need an LJ account to post). If you haven’t read the book yet — which most of you, I expect, have not — just come back later; I’ll link to this from my site so you can find it again.

(Previous discussion threads for Midnight Never Come and Deeds of Men are still open, too.)

Just a few hours left . . . .

Which is to say that you can probably already find Ashes in your local bookstore, since they’re generally on the lax side about when they shelve things. But officially, June 10th is the street date for my second Onyx Court novel. Get your dose of faerie politics + explosions today! (Or tomorrow.)

I should also mention that I’ve recovered from the delay imposed by my London research, and picked the next two winners for the Deeds of Men giveaway. I think we’re doing one more set after this, so if you want signed copies of the first two Onyx Court books, sign up now — I’ll do the last drawing next Monday.

Day Five: In which I draw bad diagrams of clocks

Last night Irrith handed me the question I need to ask about her. She didn’t hand me the answer, mind you, but that’s okay. I’ll pry that out of her soon enough.

On less of a cheerful note, last night featured a different set of idiot roommates, in this case ones who apparently don’t grasp the concept that the last one to bed should turn off the lights. I woke up at 4 a.m. to find them all still blazing away, and me in the top bunk (of three), unwilling to risk my sleepy neck just to turn them off. So less than perfect sleep, and it’s a chilly grey morning when I get up. I’m happy to enjoy the comforts of the cabin this time as I head downriver again.

This route is getting familiar.