A bold claim, yes, and a necessary one given the
way that the New York media world is characterizing the world’s
biggest bookstore. Amazon is in confidential negotiations with the
French-owned publishing conglomerate Hachette over the future
pricing of ebooks; the terms of that agreement are expected to set
the template for Amazon’s relationship with other major publishing
houses. While the talks are going on, Amazon has effectively made
Hachette titles unavailable to customers, a hardball action that
has led
observers to liken the retailer to Vladimir Putin and the
Mafia.
Hachette on the other hand is being depicted as a gentle,
delicate flower—a lonely David facing off against an indomitable
Goliath. Or in even more overblown comparisons, The New York
Times quotes a literary agent likening the head of Hachette
to
“Horatius at the Bridge,”…referring to the soldier of legend
who single-handedly saved ancient Rome by fighting off an invading
army. “He is carrying the rest of the industry on his back.”
That’s a real pant-load.
In a new column for The Daily Beast, I argue that when
it comes to the selling and buying of books over its 20-year
history, Amazon has consistently been on the side of the
reader/customer. This current fight isn’t any different, especially
since it pits Amazon against a publisher that, along with Apple and
four of the other largest publishers on the planet, recently
settled a lawsuit in which they colluded to force Amazon to raise
its prices on ebooks.
As The Wall Street Journal reported when
the price-rigging case was settled in 2012, “The five publishers
and Apple hatched an arrangement that lifted the price of many
best-selling e-books to $12.99 or $14.99, according to the suit.
The publishers then banded together to impose that model on Amazon,
the government alleged.”
On behalf of authors and
publishers, Jobs unveiled what he called his “aikido move,” which
would not only change price points but shift to an “agency model,”
where the seller gets a commission on each unit sold rather than
buying a certain number of units at a fixed price. “We’ll go to the
agency model,” Jobs explained, “where you set the price, and we get
our 30 percent [commission], and yes, the customer pays a little
more, but that’s what you want anyway.”That’s an interesting line that doesn’t seem to make it into all
the love being showered on Hachette by its public
champions: Yes, the customer pays a little more, but
that’s what you want anyway.
Read the whole thing, which includes a capsule history of
attacks by publishers and writers on the practice of discounting
books and how most antitrust actions benefit corporations and not
customers.
Disclosure: The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is a
supporter of Reason
Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason
magazine, Reason.com, and Reason TV. I have never had any
contact with him or anyone at Amazon except as a customer. Although
I greatly admire Amazon as a company and, as a part-time resident
of a small town in Ohio, benefit greatly from its services, I am
not uncritical
of it, either.
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