amazonfail

[kuddliphish]

So I don't twitter, which is where this really took off, but I do follow enough writing blogs to have heard about it quite a bit. I'm not going to go into the whole story here, since other people (like Booksquare, Neil Gaiman, and Smart Bitches) have done that pretty thoroughly, but the up shot is that, over the weekend, a whole bunch of books,

Comments

[mbrubeck]

I can understand why big publishing houses would worry about Amazon's size and influence. (It's a similar situation to Apple's hold on online music distribution.) But I don't think readers and forward-looking authors need to worry. As big as Amazon is, it doesn't have anything like a monopoly. There's absolutely zero barrier to me buying my next book from Powell's, bn.com, or the huge independent bookstore a block away from my office (and, ironically, just six blocks away from my old Amazon.com office). In fact, I use Book Burro to modify every Amazon detail page to include links to public libraries and other booksellers. The minute Amazon fails to find a book and some other store succeeds, that store has won my money.

On the contrary, I think Amazon's existence is a huge benefit for marginalized authors in particular. Twenty years ago, how easy was it to find any books about gays and lesbians - especially for readers not living in large, progressive cities? Now anyone anywhere in the world can buy any book that Amazon or its third-party sellers can find.

This is similar to Amazon's role as the largest sex toy shop you never knew existed. That's right, there's a full range of vibrators tucked away under "Health and Beauty," right next to the lipstick and asthma inhalers. But for this to remain profitable to Amazon, they also have to avoid dumping customers there by accident. The same is true for a book section where Goodnight Moon has to share a search index with the Kama Sutra.

I agree that Amazon's categorization of adult content is neither correct nor transparent. The problem is that doing it right would cost a whole lot more, and for little benefit to Amazon. Furthermore, no one should be relying on Amazon to implement socially optimal search and browse policies.

If publishers would get their heads out of the sand, they wouldn't be relying on Amazon.com as the way for people to find books online. This is the internet. You can set up your own site with a few clicks! The content that Amazon and Google have fought tooth and nail for the right to search and excerpt - the publishers have unfettered access and they've done nothing with it. Why not put up full metadata and free chapters of every book in print, free to the public, and visible to search engines? Skip the retail channel and sell directly to customers! Offer DRM-free ebooks that work on any device! Stop taking books out of print, and make your whole catalog available by print-on-demand! It would be so easy for a publisher to offer the best way for readers to find its books, and regain control over the experience. But only a handful have done anything like this. (The new Tor.com is a notable step. And of course some individual authors like Gaiman are using the internet in constructive ways.) For the most part, publishing houses are trying to ignore the internet and shunt readers off to companies like Amazon and Google, who are actually putting information where people can find it but who have their own competing business needs too.

Frankly, I think its wrong to expect any for-profit company (whether publisher or retailer) to double as a guardian of fairness, diversity, or whatever. Authors have plenty of ways to connect to readers, and if Amazon and the major publishers can't find a way to profit from those connections, then someone else can - including the authors themselves.