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I just got a letter from Amazon about Hachette

39K views 599 replies 183 participants last post by  75845 
#1 ·
I cannot believe it! Anyone else seen this yet?

Dear KDP Author,

Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing. It was the paperback book. This was a time when movie tickets cost 10 or 20 cents, and books cost $2.50. The new paperback cost 25 cents - it was ten times cheaper. Readers loved the paperback and millions of copies were sold in just the first year.

With it being so inexpensive and with so many more people able to afford to buy and read books, you would think the literary establishment of the day would have celebrated the invention of the paperback, yes? Nope. Instead, they dug in and circled the wagons. They believed low cost paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry (not to mention their own bank accounts). Many bookstores refused to stock them, and the early paperback publishers had to use unconventional methods of distribution - places like newsstands and drugstores. The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if "publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them." Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.

Well… history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

Fast forward to today, and it's the e-book's turn to be opposed by the literary establishment. Amazon and Hachette - a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion media conglomerate - are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 and even $19.99. That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there's no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market - e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive.

Perhaps channeling Orwell's decades old suggestion, Hachette has already been caught illegally colluding with its competitors to raise e-book prices. So far those parties have paid $166 million in penalties and restitution. Colluding with its competitors to raise prices wasn't only illegal, it was also highly disrespectful to Hachette's readers.

The fact is many established incumbents in the industry have taken the position that lower e-book prices will "devalue books" and hurt "Arts and Letters." They're wrong. Just as paperbacks did not destroy book culture despite being ten times cheaper, neither will e-books. On the contrary, paperbacks ended up rejuvenating the book industry and making it stronger. The same will happen with e-books.

Many inside the echo-chamber of the industry often draw the box too small. They think books only compete against books. But in reality, books compete against mobile games, television, movies, Facebook, blogs, free news sites and more. If we want a healthy reading culture, we have to work hard to be sure books actually are competitive against these other media types, and a big part of that is working hard to make books less expensive.

Moreover, e-books are highly price elastic. This means that when the price goes down, customers buy much more. We've quantified the price elasticity of e-books from repeated measurements across many titles. For every copy an e-book would sell at $14.99, it would sell 1.74 copies if priced at $9.99. So, for example, if customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99, then customers would buy 174,000 copies of that same e-book at $9.99. Total revenue at $14.99 would be $1,499,000. Total revenue at $9.99 is $1,738,000. The important thing to note here is that the lower price is good for all parties involved: the customer is paying 33% less and the author is getting a royalty check 16% larger and being read by an audience that's 74% larger. The pie is simply bigger.

But when a thing has been done a certain way for a long time, resisting change can be a reflexive instinct, and the powerful interests of the status quo are hard to move. It was never in George Orwell's interest to suppress paperback books - he was wrong about that.

And despite what some would have you believe, authors are not united on this issue. When the Authors Guild recently wrote on this, they titled their post: "Amazon-Hachette Debate Yields Diverse Opinions Among Authors" (the comments to this post are worth a read). A petition started by another group of authors and aimed at Hachette, titled "Stop Fighting Low Prices and Fair Wages," garnered over 7,600 signatures. And there are myriad articles and posts, by authors and readers alike, supporting us in our effort to keep prices low and build a healthy reading culture. Author David Gaughran's recent interview is another piece worth reading.

We recognize that writers reasonably want to be left out of a dispute between large companies. Some have suggested that we "just talk." We tried that. Hachette spent three months stonewalling and only grudgingly began to even acknowledge our concerns when we took action to reduce sales of their titles in our store. Since then Amazon has made three separate offers to Hachette to take authors out of the middle. We first suggested that we (Amazon and Hachette) jointly make author royalties whole during the term of the dispute. Then we suggested that authors receive 100% of all sales of their titles until this dispute is resolved. Then we suggested that we would return to normal business operations if Amazon and Hachette's normal share of revenue went to a literacy charity. But Hachette, and their parent company Lagardere, have quickly and repeatedly dismissed these offers even though e-books represent 1% of their revenues and they could easily agree to do so. They believe they get leverage from keeping their authors in the middle.

We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices. We know making books more affordable is good for book culture. We'd like your help. Please email Hachette and copy us.

Hachette CEO, Michael Pietsch: Michael.Pietsch@hbgusa.com

Copy us at: readers-united@amazon.com

Please consider including these points:

- We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.
- Lowering e-book prices will help - not hurt - the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.
- Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon's offers to take them out of the middle.
- Especially if you're an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.

Thanks for your support.

The Amazon Books Team

P.S. You can also find this letter at www.readersunited.com
 
#27 ·
I just saw this.

And truly, it's beyond disturbing.

My first thought if it's legitimate is if it's such a hardship for the Zon and Hachette to work this contract out, pull Hachette's books because you don't have a contract.

I don't care.


Secondly, this is ugly business. Ruthless and unseemly and this communique makes me think long and hard about the Zon on a number of levels, and it isn't pretty. (I was already beginning to feel this way from the previous press releases on this front). The thing is I worked with large global accounts for years in Seattle, so I'm aware of how they do business and treat vendors, but whoever is running their communications department (if this is for real) is not being professional on any level whatsoever. I used to do public relations and marketing as well, so I KNOW how it's done.

Wow. Just wow.


And if they've been hacked...bigger problems. Huge implications and we should all be concerned.
 
#28 ·
I got it. It seems kind of undignified to me, involving us, their readers and writers in their fight. I dunno, maybe it's just me reacting this way. What do you guys think? I haven’t read all the responses in this thread yet; will start now.

It's definitely interesting…
 
#29 ·
I just got it, and the email address it went to is an address I ONLY used to register with KDP - literally the only time that email address is used is for interacting with KDP, and there are no possible links between it and any of my actual pen names. 

So there are only two possibilities as I see it:

1) This email is fake, which means someone has gained access to Amazon's central KDP database, as that's the only way they could be mass emailing all of us to our KDP registered email accounts.

2) This email is legitimate and Amazon is actually asking self-published authors to email blast Hachette as part of their ongoing negotiation tactics.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure which possibility disturbs me more.  That our info is that vulnerable to an outside hacker or that Amazon actually thinks petitioning authors to email their competitor on their behalf is a worthwhile strategy.

If the latter, good lord this has gotten ridiculous.  As Patty said earlier in the thread, Amazon is not our friend.  They are not negotiating with Hachette on our behalf.  Its entirely possible that Amazon emerging victorious from these negotiations will be the better for authors than if Hachette 'wins', but even so, that is entirely incidental to their true goal in these negotiations - aka protecting their bottom line.  They are not crusading for a better future for literature, the arts and authors everywhere, and quite frankly I find recruiting authors into their negotiation tactics under that guise to be actually kinda insulting.
 
#38 ·
Readers United. Heh. If this is legit, I think Amazon and Hachette are both overestimating how much readers actually care about not being able to pre-order a few books.

Maybe this is an important fight for writers and other industry pros, but readers will keep on reading no matter what.
 
#39 ·
We are not partners in this dispute and it's got fairly little to do with us. Nor does it make any sense to let a bunch of self-publishers willy-nilly fire off emails to a company. And anyway, isn't the personal email address of Hachette's CEO a private thing?

So? Amazon bombs the Hachette CEO's email, so that when he reads his email on Monday, he'll have thousands of stupidly uniformed complaints?

What good would they think that does in the negotiation.

No, I still think it's a scam, or a disgruntled employee, and if I were KDP I'd fire this person on the spot. If this really is from KDP and sanctioned by Amazon (which I doubt), then it's a move that's stupid beyond belief.
 
#40 ·
Out of curiosity, for those posting saying that they find this disturbing, how is this move wildly different to Hachette enlisting their authors to blog, tweet, email, write newspaper pieces or drop anti-Amazon bombs on TV shows?

Is it just the request that you consider getting involved disturbing?

Amazon should just pull the buy buttons for Hachette and be done with it. I imagine negotiations would restart pretty quick if that happened.
 
#43 ·
Colin Taber said:
Out of curiosity, for those posting saying that they find this disturbing, how is this move wildly different to Hachette enlisting their authors to blog, tweet, email, write newspaper pieces or drop anti-Amazon bombs on TV shows?

Is it just the request that you consider getting involved disturbing?

Amazon should just pull the buy buttons for Hachette and be done with it. I imagine negotiations would restart pretty quick if that happened.
Because Hachette asks THEIR authors. The authors they invested in, whose book launches they paid for, whose book tours they organised.

The only thing Amazon does for us is proved a service (a handy one, to be sure), but we pay Amazon a commission for selling our books. We are not Amazon's authors.
 
#44 ·
Colin Taber said:
Out of curiosity, for those posting saying that they find this disturbing, how is this move wildly different to Hachette enlisting their authors to blog, tweet, email, write newspaper pieces or drop anti-Amazon bombs on TV shows?

Is it just the request that you consider getting involved disturbing?

Amazon should just pull the buy buttons for Hachette and be done with it. I imagine negotiations would restart pretty quick if that happened.
Because the degree to which Hachette is a business partner to their authors is wildly different to the degree to which Amazon is a business partner to self-published authors. Its not even apples and oranges, its canned pears and Cheetos. The whole point of self-publishing is its an entirely different ball game to how traditional publishing works, that's literally THE WHOLE POINT. So acting like we're directly comparable to authors published through a New York publisher is just completely invalid because we're self-published specifically so as NOT to be like them.

Hachette authors have an extremely vested interest in these negotiations, since they have contracts with Hachette which will be directly affected by whatever contract Hachette signs with Amazon. We on the other hand, have no contract with anyone. We have Terms and Conditions. Not remotely the same thing.
 
#45 ·
DaCosta said:
At the risk of being put in stocks, I for one support what they're doing. Yes, I know, Amazon is not my friend, but they have a point.
+1

I don't think this is a hack or a conspiracy, it is just another move in a chess game.

I'm guessing Amazon thought they would have had this whole thing all sorted out by now, but the fact that it is dragging on towards the Christmas buying season has them concerned. I'm sure they also don't like all the mud that's being thrown their way.
 
#46 ·
Hasn't anyone spotted the inherent contradiction? The email urges authors to write to Hachette, saying, "Stop using your authors as leverage." Wha...?

This kind of rant is far from the usual Amazon fare, which makes me think it can't be genuine. If it is, then Amazon has seriously lost the plot.

On pricing, my view is that Authors should have the freedom to price their own books. End of story.
 
#47 ·
On further inspection:

The first copy of the message I received came to the email address I use for my UK login as a customer and for UK Author Central and came from order-update@amazon.com with the title 'An Important Kindle Request'.

The second copy of the message I received came to the address I use for KDP and as a US customer and for US Author Central and came from kdp-support@amazon.com with the title 'Important Kindle Request'.

If Amazon has been infiltrated, both the UK customer service system and and the KDP system must have been affected.

Worrying... :(

Edited to add... both messages addressed me as 'Dear KDP Author'.
 
#48 ·
Colin Taber said:
+1

I don't think this is a hack or a conspiracy, it is just another move in a chess game.

I'm guessing Amazon thought they would have had this whole thing all sorted out by now, but the fact that it is dragging on towards the Christmas buying season has them concerned. I'm sure they also don't like all the mud that's being thrown their way.
I'm neither disturbed by it, nor angered at receiving it. How else are they going to contact you? You're in a business relationship with them and they want to make a point to you. Whether you agree with it or not, they've contacted you legitimately. It's your right to disagree of course, but I see nothing wrong with them putting their point across. Nor do I find it particularly heavy-handed - it's direct and doesn't waste your valuable time. How else could they have written it?
 
#49 ·
portiadacosta said:
On further inspection:

The first copy of the message I received came to the email address I use for my UK login as a customer and for UK Author Central and came from order-update@amazon.com with the title 'An Important Kindle Request'.

The second copy of the message I received came to the address I use for KDP and as a US customer and for US Author Central and came from kdp-support@amazon.com with the title 'Important Kindle Request'.

If Amazon has been infiltrated, both the UK customer service system and and the KDP system must have been affected.

Worrying... :(

Edited to add... both messages addressed me as 'Dear KDP Author'.
A hacker can disguise his mailing address. It's crazy simple.
 
#50 ·
Lucas Bale said:
I'm neither disturbed by it, nor angered at receiving it. How else are they going to contact you? You're in a business relationship with them and they want to make a point to you. Whether you agree with it or not, they've contacted you legitimately. It's your right to disagree of course, but I see nothing wrong with them putting their point across. Nor do I find it particularly heavy-handed - it's direct and doesn't waste your valuable time. How else could they have written it?
I agree with you entirely. I'm surprised at the hostility and shock some people are expressing that they have been contacted.
 
#51 ·
Patty Jansen said:
Because Hachette asks THEIR authors. The authors they invested in, whose book launches they paid for, whose book tours they organised.

The only thing Amazon does for us is proved a service (a handy one, to be sure), but we pay Amazon a commission for selling our books. We are not Amazon's authors.
They provide us a tremendous service, all the tools we need to publish and promote our work, a storefront on the largest retail site in the world, and traffic we could never afford to generate on our own. They do the lion's share of the heavy marketing for us, process payments for us on what is probably the most secure website on the planet, deliver the goods so we don't have to. It costs them a huge amount of money to provide us with those tools. They may not have us under contract, or pay us an advance, but they invest in us just the same.

I see nothing wrong with their asking for our support. Suggesting we email Hachette is no different than the people who ask us to write to our Congressmen about a particular issue. They are trying to rally us and I see nothing wrong with that.
 
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