Me and Salinger and Patterson an’ Them

So . . . what do I have in common with J.D. Salinger and James Patterson and Malcolm Gladwell and Stephen Colbert? (Besides a loyal following who view me as a god, I mean?)

We— and a whole lot of other folks— are now caught in the middle in yet another battle between Amazon and a publisher, in this case Hachette/Little, Brown, the science fiction imprint of which is Orbit.

We Orbit writers have for the last couple weeks been discussing among ourselves the fact that our novels, while still in print, are listed by Amazon as “usually ships within 2-3 weeks.”  (Here’s a link to This Is Not a Game so you can view the phenomenon for yourself.)  Since the books are all in print and available, this means that Amazon was deliberately not restocking when inventory ran low.  We speculated whether Amazon was experimenting by keeping physical books out of circulation in order to drive more readers to ebooks and the Kindle— though I thought that seemed unlikely given the whole “customer is king” philosophy of Amazon.

The most likely reason, we figured, was that there was some kind of conflict going on between Amazon and Hachette.  The customer may be king at Amazon, I thought, but Greenbacks are God.

Today that speculation was proved right.  Hachette announced that their contract with Amazon was expiring, and that they are in negotiation.  Amazon’s stock lost a quarter of its value this year as a result of stockholders getting impatient about finally acquiring a share of the company’s profits, and Amazon is eager to squeeze every penny out of publishers.  Publishers, already threatened by an out-of-date mid-20th century business model they can’t seem to escape, need to keep those pennies.

My guess is that Amazon doesn’t really care if they drive publishers out of business.  Then they can pick up their assets at a bargain price.

My guess is that neither Hachette nor Amazon is sparing a lot of compassion at this moment for writers.  We’re just the tennis ball that gets slammed back and forth as they play their billion-dollar game.

So what do you do if you want a paperback of This is Not a Game?  I’d suggest getting yourself an account at Barnes & Noble.  Or go to your local brick-and-mortar store and special-order a copy.

My guess is that you’ll get it in considerably less than 2-3 weeks.

And, if you’ve already got a copy of TINAG, you might take pity on other Orbit writers, like NK Jemisin, James S.A. Corey, and Kim Stanley Robinson, and maybe get a copy of one or two of their works as well.

Now here’s a thought: whenever Amazon gets in negotiations with someone, they go straight to the Nuclear Option.  When they were in negotiations with MacMillan a few years ago, they removed the “buy button” from MacMillan’s pages.  When they were in negotiations with the Independent Publishers’ Group, all 4000 of IPGs books vanished from the Amazon catalog.

Now I ask you: how long will the publishers put up with this?  Because the truth is, they don’t have to.

In the days of my youth, paperback books had little order slips in the back, with prices and instructions and brief descriptions of the books available.  If you wanted some of those books, you could clip that last page, fill in your name, tape your quarters to a card, and order direct from the publisher.

Why don’t publishers do that sort of thing now?  Why don’t publishers get their own electronic marketplace?

And the answer is: “Well, in order to have such a thing, we’d have to have warehouses, and printing presses, and a huge Internet presence.”

Which leads me to say: “Well, you already have the printing presses, and you’ve got the warehouses, which come fully equipped with the charmingly-named ‘warehouse apes’ to move the stock about, and you’ve already got a web presence, which however pathetic is still on the web.”

And then they say, “Well, it’s not the sort of thing we do.”

To which I say, “Do you realize how lame and stupid that response makes you sound?”

If I were one of the Big Five, I’d call up the other four and agree to put money down on creating a direct competitor to Amazon, shipping both books and ebooks to whoever wants them.  I’d hire away someone from Amazon to run it (or from B&N, or Wal-mart, or someone who’s really good at running a web business).

Now it might be claimed that this is an attempt to create a monopoly, which it isn’t if the publishers continue to ship to Amazon, B&N, Baker & Taylor, and whoever else wants their product.

Trouble will appear, however, when it comes to publishers agreeing to discount their product in the same way that Amazon and other retailers do.  Publisher don’t quite understand that the web runs on discounts.  They’re a MSRP sort of business.  Just remember how long it took them to understand that ebooks should be priced differently from hardbacks— and a number of them still haven’t got that message.  (When I see that the ebook I want is priced higher than the mass-market paperback, you know what that makes me do— ?  Go to the library!)

But in the meantime— until Amazon’s competitors and suppliers develop some smarts— we Orbit authors are stuck within the blast zone of the Nuclear Option.