Amazon's Arc

Hardball pricing tactics, combined with market dominance, have made Amazon the elephant in the room that no one can avoid talking about any more.

As writers who hope for publishing support, we despair over what Amazon's cut-to-the-bone pricing is doing to many traditional publishers and to critical parts of publishing itself; and at the same time we love the advantages that can be gleaned by working with the behemoth. Now that Amazon's not only the biggest online bookseller for all books and huge venue for indie-published books, but has established its own substantial publishing imprints, it is a player in our world like never before.

Personally, I share the belief that a shakeup was overdue in the traditional publishing industry, but like most people, I sure don't want to see the loss of quality or of opportunity for meaningful editing, distribution, and publicity that are the innards that make publishing good, not only for writers, but for readers.

The past decade, since the tsunami of digital publishing hit, has been a wild ride, and promises to continue to be for a while. Amazon is, of course, key to the tsunami, and there's still no telling exactly how the sea change will leave the beaches it crashes over. What will survive and grow stronger? What will be nothing but beach detritus when the waves recede? There are signs that many of the traditional publishers will not, after all, be detritus. Hooray! I believe that if they maintain a strong competitive presence, we writers and readers will eventually end up with the best of both worlds.  But before we get there, we've still got some serious undertows to deal with. One way of knowing what those might be is to keep up with what's happening with Amazon in the book world.

An article about a current development was published last week in Amazon's home town of Seattle, in the Seattle Times newspaper. Worth a read all the way through, but to summarize what's in the article about recent developments in what I like to call the Amazon Arc of Influence, consider:

• early 2010: Amazon removes 'buy' buttons from MacMillan's titles (see Standoff with publishers section of article). Amazon ended up rescinding that action, but it set the tone for what was to come
• February, 2012: the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) debacle—Amazon pulls 5,000 IPG titles from its sites because IPG won't accept Amazon's pricing terms
• Currently: small publishers are feeling the pinch big-time from Amazon, even more than previously. They can't afford Amazon's pricing demands and those who are dependent on Amazon for the majority of their sales face possible closure

According to the article, Amazon's pricing cut demands to publishers are often made by email, with no personal contact information provided, leaving almost no room for discussion. A lot of the resulting  anger and frustration is coming not only from the impossible bottom line being demanded, but by what is felt as an offensive and overly aggressive attitude from Amazon. And, of course, Amazon does not seem to hesitate to cut off anyone from its distribution network if they don't comply with the pricing cut demands.

Feeling conflicted about all this? Remember, it's good to stay abreast of what's going on in the industry—it may allow you to take advantage of publishing opportunities, or at least tread water while we wait for the waves to recede. If reading the Seattle Times article adds to your angst, be sure to go to the Amazon logo and its parody next to the Standoff with publishers section and play with the logo—move the little orange bar left and right to see how some publishers are venting. :-)

Yet, I believe many new indie-published authors have had good experiences from working through Amazon and other digital publishers/distributors. Are you one of them? Where do you think writers will find their comfort zone in all of this?

~ Linda