[contextly_auto_sidebar id="cbGdJO2smCNX5vcUPc2VBnWMyTRPboTU"] WELL, it's not clear who cried uncle first, but this fight between the online realtor and the French publishing company -- whose authors were being punished by late delivery and discouraged sales -- seems to be resolved. Here's the lead from today's New York Times story: Amazon and Hachette announced Thursday morning that they … [Read more...]
Paul Krugman on Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="EnEg7SR54tQeApaTB0TxyD3jWfVDaZ1e"] Is the online bookseller a monopoly? A monopsony? I'll leave the details to the economists, but will concur with the New York Times columnist -- and the recent New Republic story -- on the company's danger. The most succinct way to phrase it may be the way Paul Krugman opens today's column: "Amazon.com, the giant online retailer, … [Read more...]
Amazon and the New York Times
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hcxWCofPNmshtu5V4mfeJWMEKeMUb4SZ"] I REMAIN a dedicated fan of the Gray Lady, but its recent pieces looking for some "good news" in the Amazon fight struck me as bit strange. Today I respond in a post for Salon. It begins this way: In the careful-what-you-wish-for department: A bit more than a week ago, the New York Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, urged … [Read more...]
Is Amazon a Monopoly?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="QUacYyetZUphAZnyUIQyaD8AKTam7LBQ"] THE battle over Amazon -- including the siege of Hachette -- has heated up lately, with The New Republic's Franklin Foer and several prominent authors, including Ursula Le Guin, calling the online bookseller "a monopoly." Foer has argued that it's time for the Department of Justice to break Amazon up. This is from his TNR piece, … [Read more...]
Philip Roth, Le Guin Take on Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="65McoqrzvnW78eClGabJ9zi1OijdJLHZ"] WRITERS and artists are notoriously difficult to corral; it's both built into the job description and something that keeps the creative class from asserting itself. But lately a number of scribes have united in an effort to resist the bullying of the online bookseller. The New York Times reports : Now, hundreds … [Read more...]
An LA Novelist Pleads With Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="2X67n54jvsskEeTyvZeL9ZzPV0yO4y6x"] JANET Fitch, a friend whose writing I admire, has written an open letter to Jeff Bezos of Amazon about what the online bookseller is doing to the literary trade and the the nation's "intellectual life." Amazon's dominance means its decisions matter, she writes: "I'd like this profession of author to remain a possibility for young … [Read more...]
One Publisher Takes on Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="TUHr64z55mkmhkosqXugONtslgtzjq1a"] IT'S hard to know what an author or publisher should do when faced with Amazon's dominance of the market: It's hard to withdraw from a distributor who handles so large a portion of book (especially e-book) sales. But just as several small record labels have pulled their music from Spotify and other streaming services, the … [Read more...]
German Writers Stand Up to Amazon
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="hPvvYov9l3ydhtOyPeAaXmviWmWA6lEM"] WHETHER opposition to the online octopus is growing and spreading is hard to tell, but some of the anger we've seen in the US literary community seems to be driving authors in the German-speaking world as well. A New York Times story reports that more than a thousand German-language authors have written a letter of protest. The … [Read more...]
Amazon Attacks… George Orwell
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="FGMaW10z0XI8nVQN7MfT1Ac9PxVEGJCS"] BOY, this is weird. The online bookseller, in an attempt to tackle its critics, has been quoting George Orwell WAY out of context. A New York Times story gets at the whole messy business. In 1936 Orwell told a British paper: “The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if the other publishers had any … [Read more...]
Will Amazon Crush Publishing?
[contextly_auto_sidebar id="vKKFLjwmwHjYmDjG3md6BwURLIgqKbsB"] RECENTLY I've written a bit about Amazon and other giant tech companies and how they have begun to crush the world of culture, and the people who make it, while the Department of Justice and other regulatory agencies sleep. These are longstanding concerns of mine, as a journalist who writes about music and the arts, as well as the … [Read more...]