Many of you have heard that right now its difficult to order many backlist titles published by Hachette from Amazon. (Hachette is one of the big six U.S. publishers and is better known by its imprint names Little Brown and Grand Central.). Certainly youve heard of some of the authors effected--James Patterson, Alice Hoffman, Anita Shreve, Malcolm Gladwell, Nicholas Sparks, . . . In any case, Amazon is making it difficult to order books from Little Brown and Grand Central (claiming that there are delays and the books will be available in 2 to 4 weeks). But the books ARE readily available. Hachette isnt delaying shipments. These delays are manufactured by Amazon because it is currently fighting for a bigger slice of the profits on e-book sales with Hachette. This reminds us of when, a few years back, Amazon removed the buy buttons from all books published by Macmillan. That, too, was during a period when Amazon was negotiating new terms with a publisher. These actions are punitive and and are not in the best interest of readers or authors. And its also a terrific? sad? terrifying? example of what a book industry controlled by Amazon would be susceptible to. And although the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and most major U.S. papers have covered the story extensively, the Washington Post, a newspaper owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has not published anything about the controversy or Amazons actions. Coincidence?
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 12:56:22 +0000
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