Comments on: And the Saga Continues http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819 Sat, 02 Jul 2016 04:58:42 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.2 By: Diane Farr http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57809 Tue, 06 Mar 2012 00:49:23 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57809 It gets worse. Amazon not only listens to consumers and delivers what they want, it listens to authors and delivers what they want, too. B&N treats authors with the same disdain & high-handedness previously dished out by traditional publishers – and guess what? We don’t have to take it anymore. We’ve got somewhere else to go.

Example: Go to bn.com and try to email someone in the authors’ service department. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. There isn’t one. So if someone else’s bio is showing up on ALL your titles’ sales pages at bn.com, there is no one to whom you can point this out.

I have emailed four times and received absolutely no response at all. Not even an auto-response saying that they’ve received my email.

You can’t run a business this way in 2012, folks.

I wouldn’t buy a Nook, thank you. B&N is heading for history’s scrapheap. That’s my story & I’m sticking to it!

Happy reading -
Diane Farr

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By: Linda Hilton http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57739 Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:21:42 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57739 Barnes & Noble was not the first bookseller to enter the publishing business. Waldenbooks tried it in the late 1980s with their Pageant line, a joint venture with Crown Publishers (which was eventually swallowed up by Random House). The first thing I asked my agent, Richard Curtis, when he called to tell me he’d sold a book of mine to Pageant, was “Are they going to have the books anywhere besides Waldenbooks?” His response was of course they would, but I didn’t believe him. . . . or them. Sure enough, the other bookseller chains (B. Dalton, Reader’s World, etc. in those days) wouldn’t touch them, and the project lasted less than a year. Duh.

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By: Leigh AAR http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57426 Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:25:25 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57426 “For readers, high price points for ebooks might drive them to a library, except that publishers have withheld titles from libraries. Therefore, some readers might turn to pirated digital editions; others might turn to other forms of entertainment; others find cheaper books on Amazon. It has a dark beauty: through the combination of usurious pricing strategies and their undeclared war on libraries, the largest publishers have unerringly drawn their customers – readers with whom they’ve never cared to have a direct relationship – closer into the arms of the retailer whose market power and influence they most fear – Amazon. So much for a strategy of self-interest.”

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/02/28/i-almost-bought-a-book-today-why-im-friends-with-amazon/

Amen. . .

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By: Leigh AAR http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57289 Mon, 27 Feb 2012 04:42:50 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57289 I am not sure about the M-Edge article . I read it when it came out in December. It seems very similar to articles I read talking about how Wal-Mart deals with its supplies.

I did see the IPG (Independent Publishers Group)article after I had already written this. I thought there were still in talks, but I could be mistaken.

There is some discussion how publishers would eliminate DRM and level the field:

That Charlie Stross piece is also a great read, and makes the point pretty explicitly that the publishers created their own problem by insisting on DRM’d ebooks:
As ebook sales mushroom, the Big Six’s insistence on DRM has proven to be a hideous mistake. Rather than reducing piracy, it has locked customers in Amazon’s walled garden, which in turn increases Amazon’s leverage over publishers. And unlike pirated copies (which don’t automatically represent lost sales) Amazon is a direct revenue threat because Amazon are have no qualms about squeezing their suppliers — or trying to poach authors for their “direct” publishing channel by offering initially favourable terms. (Which will doubtless get a lot less favourable once the monopoly is secured …)

If the big six began selling ebooks without DRM, readers would at least be able to buy from other retailers and read their ebooks on whatever platform they wanted, thus eroding Amazon’s monopoly position. But it’s not clear that the folks in the boardrooms are agile enough to recognize the tar pit they’ve fallen into …

However it doesn’t make sense to me. If retailers can’t discount e-books because of agency pricing then there is no advantage to me to shop around.

And I like what this author said:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/drm-amazon-and-publisher-throa.html

Kassia Krozser: Last week’s rather confusing co-op story — in which Amazon is apparently demanding higher amounts for (digital) co-op and publisher-generated media — highlighted a fundamental truth: all is not fair in love and business. Like its bricks and mortar relatives before it, Amazon will squeeze vendors as much as possible.

But that is pretty much beside the point. Amazon’s consumer base is too large for publishers to play serious hardball — readers have too many options for publishers to lock themselves out of the Amazon readership. And, frankly, it is the policies of many publishers that have led us to what I like to call retailer lock-in.

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By: pwnn http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57272 Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:59:33 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57272 I agree with Chris. There’s no reason that B&N or other Brick and Mortar Book Sellers should act as showrooms for Amazon’s digital content they cannot sell. Shelf space costs money. If Connie Brockway wants her books on B&N or Books A Million etc shelves then she shouldn’t have signed an exclusive e-book deal with Amazon. That stance just might keep other higher profile authors from doing the same.

This KDP/Prime thing with Amazon with their demanding 3 months exclusivity of e-book titles has become very annoying. Yes there are some good deals but an awful lot of slush pile stuff to wade through and I’m wondering how many sales and future business authors are losing because of their restriction to one platform. Most people are not going to follow most authors from one platform to another to buy a book.

Amazon’s margins aren’t looking all that healthy either in their fight to be an industry loss leader to bowl over the competition. Their Net Income for the 4th Quarter was $177 million (less than three times B&N even though their revenues were 7-8 times larger) on about $17.43 billion with a forecast for a loss in the next because of operating expenses

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/technology/amazon-shares-drop-as-revenues-fall-short.html

And this is with other sales aside from Kindle and e-book sales picking up the balance sheet. Kindle like Nook seems at this point to be an investment in the future more than current profit. (B&N’s stores actually made a profit last year unlike the Nook division)

Amazon’s stock has been down at times about 25-30% of it’s highs from last Nov. (when it was in the 240s – now at 180) Investors are looking for larger profit margins and Amazon seems to be responding not by rising prices but by trying to squeeze some of it’s publishers and vendors into smaller margins for their businesses. Look at the recent bust ups with M-Edge which sells covers (but no longer on Amazon) and IPG (which resulted in 5,000 titles being removed from Amazon) when Amazon tried to change the terms in their contracts

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/02/amazon-ipg.html

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-amazon-yanks-5000-kindle-ipg-titles-in-fight-over-terms/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/m-edge-suit-accuses-amazon-of-corporate-bullying-patent-infring/

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By: Ducky http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57248 Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:41:24 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57248 I love my Kindle and most of the ebooks I buy for it are low priced bargains. Amazon also offers quite a few free books. Very rarely do I buy a higher priced ebook. Even print books I mostly get second hand from Amazon or my local paperback exchange. I dislike B&N – they often don’t have what I want and if they do I can get it cheaper through Amazon which also offers better customer service.

It’s not that I am pro Amazon and anti bookstores per se – it’s just that Amazon usually gets me what I want cheaper and quicker.

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By: LeeAnn http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57226 Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:22:10 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57226 I’m with you, Carrie. I have a Kindle and like it very much (notice I don’t say LOVE), but when the Kindle version is the same price as the paperback, forget it! ….. I’m off to the Library or better yet, the used bookstore for my very own hard copy!

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By: Carrie http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57225 Sat, 25 Feb 2012 15:04:21 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57225 All I can say is I hope the lawsuit prospers and the Agency pricing (and Apple) get busted. It’s price-fixing, pure and simple. I refuse to buy any agency book unless it’s been heavily discounted– 99 cents for example. Otherwise, I use the library, shop used book stores use coupons for print books, or simply read something else. I read between 250-300 books a year, and I haven’t had any trouble avoiding agency-priced ebooks. It’s not the price so much as the control that bothers me. One person’s stand might not mean much to the big publishers or to Apple (who I also won’t patronize anymore), but it helps me sleep at night.

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By: Barnes and Noble was considered the “brutal capitalist” of booksellers | The Passive Voice http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57224 Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:58:45 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57224 [...] to create scarcity in the channel. It sends the wrong message to readers.”Link to the rest at All About RomanceClick to Tweet/Email/Share This Post wpa2a.script_load(); Amazon, Big Publishing, BookstoresNo [...]

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By: willaful http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819&cpage=1#comment-57207 Sat, 25 Feb 2012 06:28:30 +0000 http://www.likesbooks.com/blog/?p=7819#comment-57207 P.S. Page down to my first post in the thread, reply #77. I think there are instructions for both mac and pc.

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