{"id":258808,"date":"2014-09-15T13:13:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=258808"},"modified":"2024-01-26T13:14:22","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T18:14:22","slug":"authors-united-may-not-want-to-admit-it-but-most-books-are-consumer-goods-like-any-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2014\/09\/15\/authors-united-may-not-want-to-admit-it-but-most-books-are-consumer-goods-like-any-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Authors United may not want to admit it, but most books are consumer goods like any other"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As my colleague Laura Owen has reported<\/a>, Authors United \u2014 a group of writers who are upset at the tactics Amazon is using to negotiate with the French publisher Hachette \u2014 has posted a letter to<\/a> the company\u2019s board of directors, arguing that the online retailer is being unfair to authors. Among other things, the group says Amazon is making a mistake by treating books like any other consumer product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, in a somewhat bizarre turn of events for a group that is supposedly protesting Amazon\u2019s methods \u2014 the refusal to allow advance orders of Hachette books, the removal of some books<\/a> from the search index, and so on \u2014 Authors United makes an odd admission: it agrees Amazon \u201chas every right to refuse to sell consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But wait \u2014 isn\u2019t that exactly what Amazon is doing with Hachette<\/a>, by using a variety of retailing tactics to send a message to the publisher that it is charging too much for its books and\/or not giving Amazon enough of the proceeds? It sure is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So then how could the authors\u2019 group claim that Amazon shouldn\u2019t be able to do the same thing with Hachette that it does with every other product? Simple: because Authors United argues that books are not a consumer good like any other<\/a>. Books exist in a special category, and that category of products should not be open to traditional negotiating tactics used by retailers. As the letter says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Amazon has every right to refuse to sell consumer goods in response to a pricing disagreement with a wholesaler. We all appreciate discounted razor blades and cheaper shoes. But books are not consumer goods. Books cannot be written more cheaply, nor can authors be outsourced to China. Books are not toasters or televisions. Each book is the unique, quirky creation of a lonely, intense, and often expensive struggle on the part of a single individual.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Do books belong in a special category?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So that\u2019s the case in a nutshell \u2014 books are not like razor blades or shoes, or toasters or televisions. They can\u2019t be produced more cheaply, and therefore by extension prices for books must not fall but should only rise, because that\u2019s what lonely and intense writers require for their livelihood. And authors are better than people who make toasters or televisions, or who work in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Old<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As with most arguments related to Amazon\u2019s behavior, the Authors United letter plays on a host of emotionally-loaded assumptions about the book business (and it is a business, although perhaps not a very good one). It implies that all authors are starving and intense loners, who write because their muse compels them to, and therefore shouldn\u2019t be used as pawns in Amazon\u2019s chess game with Hachette or any other publisher. Or as author JA Konrath puts it<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We\u2019re special snowflakes, unique and quirky, and the lonely, intense struggle we endure for the sake of ART is much more difficult than coal mining or waitressing or mechanical engineering or brain surgery or conservationism or rocket science.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And yet, despite this image of writers as lonely, starving artists in a garret somewhere, huge quantities of books are sold every year that are clearly based on cold, calculated marketing decisions made by either authors or publishers. Most aren\u2019t even remotely unique, quirky or created by intense individuals struggling to follow their inner voice. So maybe it should be okay for Amazon to fiddle with that supply chain, but not with the one that applies to \u201creal\u201d books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, some books play a critical role in society \u2014 but then so does music, and no one got upset when Apple started dictating prices and terms to the major record labels, just as Amazon is doing to the big publishers. Here\u2019s Konrath again<\/a>: \u201cI don\u2019t believe I\u2019m owed a living, or that what I do is particularly important. I\u2019m not curing cancer. I\u2019m not even saving whales. In fact, I\u2019m a damn lucky son of a bitch who gets to make a living doing what I love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Thinkstock \/ Vasabii<\/a> and Thinkstock \/ Worac<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my colleague Laura Owen has reported, Authors United \u2014 a group of writers who are upset at the tactics Amazon is using to negotiate with the French publisher Hachette \u2014 has posted a letter to the company\u2019s board of directors, arguing that the online retailer is being unfair to authors. Among other things, the group says Amazon … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Authors United may not want to admit it, but most books are consumer goods like any other”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":true,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-258808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gigaom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258809,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258808\/revisions\/258809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}