Authors suffer most from Amazon/Macmillan feud
This tip was sent to me from Simon Owens from Bloggasm. Thanks Simon!
The feud between Amazon and Macmillan has seemed to settle down, at least for now. Macmillan titles are again being sold on the online retailer. But the ripple effect still lingers and its anyone’s guess how the ripples created by this feud will play out in the long run.
A lot of attention has been given to Amazon and Macmillan. But what about the authors? Each party claims it has the best interest of the authors in mind, although after seeing the way Amazon and Macmillan acted, that’s a little hard to believe. I think the biggest and most direct hit on authors came from Amazon’s decision to suddenly pull all Macmillan titles from their site. Not cool.
In a recent Bloggasm post Tor authors express worry over their careers because of Macmillan/Amazon dispute (Tor is an imprint of Macmillan), we get a first-hand account from author Jay Lake about how the decision by Amazon to pull Macmillan titles has affected him:
“The worry would be if I had a book released last Tuesday or this,” he said. “A significant portion of my initial sales velocity comes from the first days on Amazon. Writers like me sell relatively few books so that missing a few hundred initial sales, and the related rise in sales ranking and attention, could be damaging, quite possibly seriously.”
Another Tor author, Tobias Buckell, expresses the same concern about impact on sales:
“And for the past five or six years I’ve worked really hard to send people from my website to Amazon because it’s the dominant online book store. It has a tremendous impact because all my sales for my original Tor books will be dropping by 80% probably.”
I’m sure there are many more authors that express the same concerns as Jay and Tobias. It was downright un-ethical for Amazon to stop selling Macmillan titles because it hurts the authors the most.
I know readers can retaliate by not buying anything from Amazon. What recourse do the authors have? I guess they could take their titles elsewhere, although I’m not sure how easy it would be for them to bail on their current publishing contract. I think most authors could do a lot better (sales-wise) selling their books directly to consumers – as print and ebooks.
Another option for authors would be to take legal action against Amazon. Since the e-retailer is so big and dominates online book sales, there’s a lawsuit in there somewhere. If any lawyers out there want to weigh in on this, please feel free to do so in the comments below.
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