More Amazon Hijinks

A friend set me this link and I'm not happy. What is it with Amazon that they just can't come out and say what they mean? They always wait until an issue turns into a PR nightmare and they are exposed as the 800lb bully in the playground.

Yeah, I think I'll be shaking loose of my Kindle and switching to a new team.

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-it-is-ugly/

Amazon in the Naughty Chair...

Remember the show Hee Haw? There was a skit that started out with the intro song:

Despair and agony on me...whoa!
Depression excessive misery...whoa!
If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all...whoat!

That is Amazon's new theme song because if pissing off your customer base was an Olympic sport - Amazon would win the gold by a Big Margin.

So what are they doing now? In a nutshell, when you do a search on Amazon the back end uses the sales ranking to determine which titles are returned in the search results. So in order to find an author's books, they need to have a sales ranking on their book pages.

Amazon (aka, the Evil Empire) has decided to start sectioning off 'adult' content for the protection of our delicate sensibilities. When a publisher sets up a book, they select terms that would apply to the book such as, erotic, erotic romance, sex, love, mystery, violence - you get the picture - this is called Metadata. At Amazon, customers can also select tags for each book so if your book is tagged as erotic - well you end up on the naughty list. Consequently, if the book you are looking for is tagged as erotic, then it won't show up on the search results.

So what have they removed? Erotic romances for one. Go search for Dominique Adair and should have at least 10 books...only one comes up. Heaven forbid if you're looking for GLBT titles because you'll be out of luck. JL Langley's My Fair Captain will only come up if you search for the complete title and there are thousands of others who've had their sales ranking stripped including Maya Banks, Jaci Burton.

But you can still search for sex toys...

According to Publisher's Lunch, Amazon has reported that this is an 'error' on their end and it will be fixed shortly. Uh...right.

Want to sound off? Amazon Customer Service: ecr@amazon.com or via phone: 1-800-201-7575 and there is a petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy

The Price of eBooks

There's been a lot of talk lately about the cost of ebooks versus their print prices. To most of us, it only makes sense that the ebook should cost less, quite a bit less than the print counterpart.

Why?

1) Lack of printing costs
2) Lack of warehousing fees
3) Lack of distribution fees (mailing, shipping etc)

This is quite a big chunk of change when you look at the price of an individual title. Ingram (the biggest book distributor in the US) demands 55% of the cover price up front. Currently they aren't in the digital market but they're working on it and I'm sure they'll suck up 55% of that too...though for what I'm not entirely sure.

Anywho - there are some costs associated with ebooks that don't come into play with the print versions.

1) DRM - gotta pay for that technology...which hackers can break faster than the legit guys can dream it up
2) Delivery - there has to be a delivery back-end needed to deliver the ebooks to the buyer

The print version's costs versus the ebook's cost...it doesn't add up. Here is the reality of ebooks - once the file is edited and sent off to the printer you are only one step away from an ebook. All that is left is to format it to the specs required by .pdf, .epub, .prc designers and toss in the DRM and voila - you have an ebook ready to be sold.

Yes, that is a bit of a simplification but the basic information is there. In order to create the four 'standard' formats...it takes less than 20 minutes apiece and you end up with a product that could conceivably be available for sale until the end of time.

So let's look at a Kindle title, No Rest For The Wicked by Kresley Cole. On Amazon the paperback price is...7.99. Guess what the Kindle price is...7.99. What are they thinking? Where is the enticement to buy the ebook?

There isn't one.

I already have the a Prime account that I pay 79.00 a year for so I have free shipping on whatever I buy (yes, I place that many orders!) it would make no sense for me to buy the ebook. Why?

1) no discount for the fact that the overhead is less than half for the ebook as it is the print
2) I have nothing to show for it. eBooks can't be resold but if I buy the print one, I can get a few dollars out of it at the used bookstore.
3) I already paid 359.00 (no shipping though! ) for the Kindle so there's no way I would pay full price for the paperback - a discount should be automatic if you want me to buy your hardware...which you're making money off of anyway. Make a decision, make money off the device or the book but not both - unkewl.
4) I can buy the same 7.99 for roughly 6.00 at my local Target, WalMart etc.

The Cole title came out in 2006 while J.R. Ward's Lover Eternal (also 7.99) came out in 2006 and the Kindle price is...6.39. Not great in my opinion but more managable.

And the best one of all...Jim Butcher's Small Favor is a 9.99 paperback...and the Kindle version was 11.99 (it has been repriced to 7.99). No one will ever be able to make a rational explanation to me as to why this should be okay.

My response? Buy ebooks from the smaller presses - the prices are better and if you buy from a good-quality, reputable press - the books are excellent too.

Corporate Bad Guys

Small Publisher's Feel the Power of Amazon's BUY Button

This story began earlier in the year when Amazon demanded a deeper discount from some publisher's than is the norm which is 50%. This time around it is Hachette Publishing - a larger publisher in the UK.

The publisher’s chief executive, Tim Hely Hutchinson, sent a defiant letter to many of his authors explaining the “oddities” of vanishing buy buttons. The online retailer, he said, was demanding a bigger slice. Publishers traditionally sell books to retailers at a discount off the recommended retail price, but Amazon was demanding more than its existing 50 percent.

The dispute with Hachette is not the first in which Amazon has resorted to removing the “buy now” buttons for certain books. In the spring it started disabling the icons for some small publishers in the United States that resisted Amazon’s demand that they use an Amazon-owned company, BookSurge, for print-on-demand services. Amazon is the dominant seller of such titles.

I used to love Amazon when it was the new kid on the block. They were so cutting edge and offered the best discounts...then they turned into a corporate monolith intent upon screwing those of whom their income is dependent. As an author, I applaud Hachette for standing up to the suck-tastic bully that Amazon has become.

Amazon - you suck.

The definition of irony...

So Amazon has this amazing ebook reader called the Kindle. The retail is about 360.00 - quite a bit to pay in these financially strapped times. Now Amazon is well known for allowing readers / businesses to sell their used products on their website. Keep in mind that when you sell or buy a book via their used book system, the author receives nothing for the sale.

So where is the "Sell Yours Here' button for the Kindle?

It doesn't exist. You can't sell your used Kindle via Amazon.

What is the bottom line? Amazon is more than willing to cheat authors out of royalty money, but they aren't willing to take one for the team.

Surprised? I didn't think so.