Saturday, January 30, 2010

Here's What Everybody's Talking about Today

Amazon Pulls Macmillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "As Venture Beat and other blogs have noticed Friday evening, books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United States, have vanished from Amazon.com.

The question is why.

I’ve talked to a person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute who says the disappearance is the result of a disagreement between Amazon.com and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books, said this person, who did not want to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter."

There's more at the link. This, of course, means that my books from St. Martin's have been pulled. You can still buy them, but from other sellers, not Amazon, and not new. I find it interesting that Jeff Bezos thinks that pulling the books is the best way to win friends and influence people. You'd think he might have tried something else. Or maybe he just doesn't care. I care, but I just ordered a book from B&N as my own mild protest. It will be interesting to see how all this shakes out.

Update: Here's the link to Indiebound.

15 comments:

RJR said...

I started buying from B&N instead of Amazon a long time ago.

RJR

Dave Zeltserman said...

something I saw on another site is it's possible that it might've been Macmillan who decided Amazon wasn't going to be selling their books. Since neither side are making statements to the press we don't who's behind this move.

Unknown said...

Ah-ha!

Cousin Nancy said...

If only the B&N website worked as well as Amazon's. My experiences w/ B&N have often been oh so hellacious...!

Unknown said...

If you all would buy ONLY from Independent Bookstores - and there are some still out there - the world would be a better place. I wish, Bill, that you had bought your protest book from Powell's instead of B&N.

Sorry to sound strident, but I have some buttons that are easy to push.

Unknown said...

Powell's didn't have it. I know about those buttons, and I do buy from Murder by the Book all too often. In fact they're holding two books for me right now.

Unknown said...

How ironic. As soon as I posted that last comment, I got an e-mail from BN. They cancelled my order. They don't have the book, either, though it was listed.

Dave Zeltserman said...

On Publishers Marketplace there's a letter from Macmillan which clears up that this was a decision by Amazon.

Dumb move on amazon's part. They're clearly worried about Apples's iPad (and for probably good reason).

Unknown said...

I know, Bill, that you are supportive of independents. I'm not sure that is the case with most people. I've never made a purchase from Amazon, and the only things I buy from B&N are remaindered books. And not very many of those. Both operations are Evil Empires.

Richard S. Wheeler said...

I have a Forge novel (Macmillan) called Snowbound, due out March 2. Amazon pulled it! What outrages me is that Amazon is not permitting the publisher to establish a price for its own product.

Unknown said...

Yes, I think that's outraging nearly everybody.

Carl V. Anderson said...

I'm not even planning on buying any books currently but it still pisses me off. I went over to find many Tor books that I currently like, including ones that could be legitimate contenders for the Hugo and Nebula awards this year, unavailable unless they come from other sellers. Its not the first time Amazon has pissed me off, but this is just ridiculous.

Unknown said...

Yes, it is. I wonder what Bezos will have to say, or if he'll even comment.

IndidBound instead said...

Here it is again, the link to the old Booksense conferation of indy stories, IndieBound:

http://www.indiebound.org/

Also the hotlink on whatever I put in the name slot.

Todd Mason said...

Now if I could wake up enough to spell or use proper syntax (in my mooning MOON)...