{"id":825,"date":"2014-05-25T18:48:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-25T18:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=825"},"modified":"2014-05-25T19:12:18","modified_gmt":"2014-05-25T19:12:18","slug":"as-publishers-fight-amazon-books-vanish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/as-publishers-fight-amazon-books-vanish","title":{"rendered":"As Publishers Fight Amazon, Books Vanish"},"content":{"rendered":"

By DAVID STREITFELD and MELISSA EDDY MAY 23, 2014 7:24 AM 593\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"23bits-amazon-blog480\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As of Friday morning, the paperback edition of Brad Stone\u2019s
\n\u201cThe Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon\u201d \u2014 a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it \u2014 was listed as \u201cunavailable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Screenshot via Amazon
\nAs of Friday morning, the paperback edition of Brad Stone\u2019s \u201cThe Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon\u201d \u2014 a book Amazon disliked so much it denounced it \u2014 was listed as \u201cunavailable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s power over the publishing and bookselling industries is unrivaled in the modern era. Now it has started wielding its might in a more brazen way than ever before.<\/p>\n

Seeking ever-higher payments from publishers to bolster its anemic bottom line, Amazon is holding books and authors hostage on two continents by delaying shipments and raising prices. The literary community is fearful and outraged \u2014 and practically begging for government intervention.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow is this not extortion? You know, the thing that is illegal when the Mafia does it,\u201d asked Dennis Loy Johnson of Melville House, echoing remarks being made across social media.<\/p>\n

Amazon is, as usual, staying mum. \u201cWe talk when we have something to say,\u201d Jeffrey P. Bezos, the founder and chief executive, said at the company\u2019s annual meeting this week.<\/p>\n

The battle is being waged largely over physical books. In the United States, Amazon has been discouraging customers from buying titles from Hachette, the fourth-largest publisher by market share. Late Thursday, it escalated the dispute by making it impossible to order Hachette titles being issued this summer and fall. It is using some of the same tactics against the Bonnier Media Group in Germany.<\/p>\n

But the real prize is control of e-books, the future of publishing.<\/p>\n

Publishers tried to rein in Amazon once, and got slapped with a federal antitrust suit for their efforts. Amazon was not directly a party to the case but has reaped the rewards in increased market power. Now it wants to increase its share of the digital proceeds. The publishers, weighing a slide into irrelevance if not nonexistence, are trying to hold the line.<\/p>\n

Late Friday afternoon, Hachette made by far its strongest comment on the conflict.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are determined to protect the value of our authors\u2019 books and our own work in editing, distributing and marketing them,\u201d said Sophie Cottrell, a Hachette senior vice president. \u201cWe hope this difficult situation will not last a long time, but we are sparing no effort and exploring all options.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Authors Guild accused the retailer of acting illegally.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon clearly has substantial market power and is abusing that market power to maintain and increase its dominance, which likely violates Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act,\u201d said Jan Constantine, the Guild\u2019s general counsel.<\/p>\n

Independent booksellers, meanwhile, announced they could supply Hachette books immediately. The second-largest physical chain, Books-a-Million, advertised 30 percent discounts on select coming Hachette titles. Among the publisher\u2019s imprints are Grand Central Publishing, Orbit and Little, Brown.<\/p>\n

Amazon is also flexing its muscles in Germany, delaying deliveries of books from Bonnier.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt appears that Amazon is doing exactly that on the German market which it has been doing on the U.S. market: using its dominant position in the market to blackmail the publishers,\u201d said Alexander Skipis, president of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.<\/p>\n

The association said its antitrust experts were examining whether Amazon\u2019s tactics violated the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it is very comfortable for customers to be able to order over the Internet, 24 hours a day, seven days a week,\u201d Mr. Skipis said. \u201cBut with such an online structure as pursued by Amazon, a book market is being destroyed that has been nurtured over decades and centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christian Schumacher-Gebler, chief executive for Bonnier in Germany, said the group\u2019s leading publishing houses noticed delays in deliveries of some of its books several weeks ago and confronted the retailer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon confirmed to us that these delays are directly related to the ongoing negotiations over conditions in the electronic book market,\u201d Mr. Schumacher-Gebler said.<\/p>\n

The retailer began refusing orders late Thursday for coming Hachette books, including J. K. Rowling\u2019s new novel, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.<\/p>\n

In some cases, even the web pages promoting the books have disappeared. Anne Rivers Siddons\u2019s new novel, \u201cThe Girls of August,\u201d coming in July, no longer has a page for the physical book or even the Kindle edition. Only the audio edition is still being sold (for more than $30).<\/p>\n

The confrontations with the publishers are the biggest display of Amazon\u2019s dominance since it briefly stripped another publisher, Macmillan, of its \u201cbuy\u201d buttons in 2010. It seems likely to encourage debate about the concentration of power by the retailer. No firm in American history has exerted the control over the American book market \u2014 physical, digital and secondhand \u2014 that Amazon does.<\/p>\n

James Patterson, one of the country\u2019s best-selling writers, described the confrontation between Amazon and Hachette as \u201ca war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBookstores, libraries, authors, and books themselves are caught in the crossfire of an economic war,\u201d he wrote on Facebook. \u201cIf this is the new American way, then maybe it has to be changed \u2014 by law, if necessary \u2014 immediately, if not sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Patterson\u2019s novels due to be released this summer and fall are now impossible to buy from Amazon in either print or digital form.<\/p>\n

Hachette, which is owned by the French conglomerate Lagard\u00e8re, was one of the publishers in the antitrust case, which involved e-book prices. But even before that, relations between the retailer and the publisher have been tense. Hachette made the case to Washington regulators in 2009 that Amazon was having a detrimental effect on publishing, but got nowhere.<\/p>\n

For several months, Amazon has been quietly discouraging the sales of Hachette\u2019s physical books by several techniques \u2014 cutting the customer\u2019s discount so the book approached list price, taking weeks to ship the book, suggesting that prospective customers buy other books instead and increasing the discount for the Kindle version.<\/p>\n

Amazon has millions of members in its Prime club, who get fast shipping. This was, as Internet wits quickly called it, the \u201cUnPrime\u201d approach.
\nThe retailer\u2019s strategy seems to be to drive a wedge between the writers, who need Amazon sales to survive, and Hachette. But this does not seem to be working the way Amazon might want. Nina Laden, a children\u2019s book writer, was one of many Hachette authors lashing out at Amazon in the last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have supported Amazon for as long as Amazon has existed,\u201d she wrote in a Facebook posting she also sent to the retailer.
\nShe went on to say that she was \u201cfrankly shocked and angry at what you are doing\u201d to her new book, \u201cOnce Upon a Memory.\u201d \u201cIt has made me tell my readers to shop elsewhere \u2014 and they are and will,\u201d she wrote. (Amazon customer service wrote back, saying \u201cWe will be glad to investigate this issue further\u201d if Ms. Laden would provide additional information.)<\/p>\n

One of the books made scarce by Amazon\u2019s actions is an updated edition of Brad Stone\u2019s \u201cThe Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon.\u201d The book revealed how Mr. Bezos said Amazon should approach vulnerable publishers \u201cthe way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat irony,\u201d said Mr. Stone, a former reporter for The New York Times. \u201cA book detailing Amazon\u2019s heavy-handed tactics in business negotiations becomes, at least in a small way, a victim of those tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this article appears in print on 05\/24\/2014, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: As Publishers Fight Amazon, Books Vanish.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2014\/05\/23\/amazon-escalates-its-battle-against-hachette\/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&smid=nytnow-share&smprod=nytnow&_r=1&<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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