Recent publishing news has been dominated by the fight between Amazon and Hachette over e-book pricing. Although details of the negotiations are not public, we do know that Amazon has already taken retributive action against Hachette by removing the pre-order option for Hachette titles, not offering the usual discount on Hachette hardcover titles, and keeping their stock of Hachette titles low enough to slow down shipments. As many observers have pointed out, Amazon's tactics have hurt their customers as much as publishers and authors because the online retailer isn't stocking merchandise that their customers want. For many shoppers who have come to rely on the convenience of Amazon - and for those whose local brick and mortar bookstores have closed down - this severely limits their access to Hachette titles. Amazon recently posted a statement explaining this tactic as business as usual and part of negotiations on behalf of its customers.
Why does this matter?
1) It reduces options for shoppers: Gumming up access to Hachette titles means that shoppers lose access to A LOT of books. Hachette owns Little, Brown, which publishes a lot of mainstream fiction, including JK Rowling's new Cormoran Strike book, The Silkworm. For shoppers whose local brick and mortar bookstores have closed down, options are limited.
2) It is going to determine the terms for other publishers: As Jeremy Greenfield explains in the Atlantic, Amazon controls much of the book - and most especially the e-book market - and this is the first big fight over e-book pricing following the court ruling against Apple for supposedly colluding with publishers to fix prices in the e-book market (a charge that Apple disputes). Hachette is not only the first publisher to come up for contract negotiations with Amazon since the ruling's two-year embargo on negotiations, but it is also one of the biggest. The outcome of this fight is likely to dictate terms for other publishers.
3) If Hachette loses, it's going to hurt publishers: Most people are angry about Amazon's tactics for numerous reasons, not least of which is the perception that Amazon is trying to put publishers out of business. Authors and (unsurprisingly) independent booksellers have condemned Amazon for its actions. As Brad Stone asserts in The Everything Store, Amazon views publishers as "sickly" gazelles and itself as a cheetah.
Now, most people would agree that publishers are not entire innocents: they are businesses, after all, and they are not always operating in their authors' best interests in terms of profit sharing. Their emphasis on profits leads them to reject a lot of books that they don't anticipate being able to sell, which means that there is potentially less experimentation in the book market and more emphasis on commercial viability. Many authors have been drawn to self-publishing on Amazon because they can get their work out there, which gives them a platform to market their work and, perhaps most importantly, make more per title than they ever would through traditional publishers. This has led many to assert that publishers and, indeed editors, are not necessary in the book world.
I disagree. Not with the proposition that there is, perhaps, too much gatekeeping in the commercial publishing world. A good friend of mine who also happens to be a talented writer recently recounted her experiences talking to agents about her latest novel in process. It was a comedy of second-guessing marketability.
However, I do think that publishers and editors add significant value to the books that they produce. They select works with promise and usher them through the editorial process. A book rarely arrives on an editor's desk ready to publish, and a good editor has a sharp eye for a work that can be shaped into something better. I don't want to see editors and publishers driven out of business through Amazon's aggressive business model.
4) It gives Amazon even greater control over the self-publishing market: I am excited about the surge in indie-published work that we're experiencing. And, while Amazon has done quite a bit to foster that surge, the indie revolution is another reason that I want to see Amazon facing more robust competition.
Let me explain: I have written elsewhere about the problem with Kindle publishing from a long-term perspective. I know that not all authors are thinking about the long-term preservation of their books, but, as a librarian, it's my job to think about it. The library where I work is currently unable to purchase Kindle titles for the collection because we cannot loan them out.
Further, there is no way for us to archive Kindle titles even if we could buy them to loan to our patrons. That means that we can't be certain that these titles will be available for future readers or for future researchers to study. That's what concerns me the most, and I am hoping to find a some sort of a solution. Regardless of the quality of any individual self-published title, we'll be faced with a huge gap in the literary record if we don't find some way to preserve a portion of the self-published titles that make up a substantial slice of the current publishing world. Imagine, for example, if no one had saved zines or eighteenth-century pamphlets.
I know that the Hachette Amazon dispute is not going to resolve the archiving question. However, I feel confident that we're not going to see any answers if one corporation has an e-book monopoly.
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