Authors and Publishers

[guessingo]

Just curious if anyone knows. It looks like Amazon has pulled the buy button from all of McMillian authors books on their website. Then put it back, but only on used books so the authors make no money. So authors are caught up in the middle of it.

Does anyone know what an authors rights are if they are unhappy with a publisher? When they sign a contract is it for a period of time. So the contract lapses and authors can have someone else publish them or is it permanent?

this is a bit off topic. I'm new here. Is this ok?

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Book contracts last until a book goes out of print. Newer contracts generally have something to define this as the book selling something like fewer than 20 copies in the last year (I can't remember the exact number, could be 100). At this point the rights revert back to the author and they can sell the book to another publishing company or start selling it themselves. Until that happens, the publisher still has the rights to the book.

The general way to show your unhappiness with your publisher is to sell your next book to a different publisher.

However, in this case, none of the authors are unhappy with Macmillan. Amazon is the one they're unhappy with.

[guessingo]

I would be unhappy with mcmillan. they are caught up in a corporate fight with amazon that is affecting them.
It is interesting that other publishers are not joining in now. Amazon can't really afford to pull the buy button on Random House on top of McMillan.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Amazon did something illogical. The dispute is over ebooks. The logical thing would have been to pull all Macmillan ebooks. The contract for selling print books was never in question, yet Amazon pulled the print books just to prove a point. Very dumb move on Amazon's part.

HarperCollins has indicated it is also starting to renegotiate with Amazon.

[guessingo]

It is hardball business. They may have pulled the buy button to get the small business owners (writers) who work with mcmillan to pressure them to back off.

I believe amazon has done this before. If I was a writer, I would just want this over with. Especially if I was one of the guys that Brandon listed who just released books. It appears that most writers don't really make alot of money. I would be mad at both McMillan and Amazon if I spent alot of my time (maybe 2 years) working on a book, just to have the release ruined. This is people's livelihood.

[Bookstore Guy]

It is hardball business. They may have pulled the buy button to get the small business owners (writers) who work with mcmillan to pressure them to back off.

Except that wont happen.  Authors don't generally deal with the pricing or distribution of their novels.  Their business is writing, not distributing or pricing.  Personally, I think Amazon was stupid.  You pull the material related to your dispute, not everything.  As Peter said, pulling just the ebooks would have made perfect sense, and it would have put mostly everyone in a more neutral position regarding this standoff.  Amazon instead decided to try to act like the playground bully.  I don't give a flying frak about ebooks.  But Amazon's idiocy prevented me from buying several books.  So, I went elsewhere, and I will from now on with regards to books.  Frak Amazon and their stupidity and inability to communicate.

Glad I never felt the need to buy a Kindle.  With 1/6 of the selection gone (and my favorite 6th), why the hell would I every want to buy a proprietary reader that they themselves don't even fully support as they throw a tantrum?  Also, think of impulse buys--which make up a lot of buying as far as books go.  How many sales did Authors lose?  Sure, some will get them back, but not all.  Sure Macmillan is partly responsible (and when everything calms down I'm sure authors will consider their future contracts), but RIGHT NOW Amazon just screwed a ton of authors and a ton of customers.

[Lord Terrisman]

We should start a petition (if that wouldn't completely mess up Brandon, Tor Publishing, and all of MacMillian).

[guessingo]

What petition? How would it hurt Brandon.

Writers can make distribution their business by leaving a publisher is does not do a good job.

[guessingo]

I don't get the gimmick of buying an e-book. They seem like an utter waste of money at this point. $400 for a pdf viewer? To be fair Barnes and Noble's reader got AWFUL reviews in the New York Times. They basically said it was garbage. They said it frequently took 3 seconds to turn a page.

That being said, in 5 years there will be e-readers for $80 and they will have more features. Or there will be iPads that are actually worth buying.  Generally it takes about 5 years for these new gadgets to work themselves out. We see which ones actually stick around and the ones that do tend to get a lot better and cheaper. The current e-books seem like an utter waste of money. People just want the latest gadget. I am a professional programmer and I don't even fall for this stuff. I am a total geek for technology too.

Layoff Sarah Palin. Hillary Clinton got $4-5 million advance. All she did was marry the right guy. Sarah Palin has a built in right wing audience built in. That being said I have no interest in her book.

[little wilson]

Hillary Clinton got $4-5 million advance. All she did was marry the right guy.

Um. Did you miss when she made a run for the president? And became a politician in her own right?

And I'm not sure you can say she married the "right guy." I mean, he cheated on her...and the whole country knew about it. That's not something the "right guy" would do....But at the same time, I know what you're saying--she married a guy who could advance her career, so in that sense, he was the right guy.

[Silk]

Authors might HAVE to reconsider future contracts if one of the major booksellers refuses to carry their books (and I don't know how long that will last; it's dragged out longer than I thought it would already), but that might not have anything to do with feeling that Macmillan is the bad guy. Amazon was the one who pulled the buy buttons, after all. Jay Lake has commented that he doesn't feel Macmillan did anything particularly unprincpled here, and further that Macmillan hadn't done anything against the authors' own interests.

Hatchett jumped on the bandwagon earlier today, incidentally, by announcing a switch to the agency model. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

[little wilson]

Agreed, Silk. Amazon didn't play their side very strategically at all...And now they're kind of contradicting their own words, since they still haven't brought the buy buttons back, even though they pretty much said they'd give in. While Amazon had a semi-decent reason at the beginning, it's useless now. This is just pathetic.

And I don't see how going to a different publisher next time will alleviate this. I mean, once this blows over, the odds of it happening again to Macmillan are relatively slim. Right? So why switch publishers? I mean, theoretically, Amazon could do something similar for a different reason a little down the road to a different publisher, screwing over those authors. They've already shown they don't have much in the way of maturity, so I wouldn't put it past them to repeat this fiasco...

[ErikHolmes]

I don't get the gimmick of buying an e-book. They seem like an utter waste of money at this point. $400 for a pdf viewer? To be fair Barnes and Noble's reader got AWFUL reviews in the New York Times. They basically said it was garbage. They said it frequently took 3 seconds to turn a page.

I wouldn't call it a gimmick. I do all of my reading on ebooks. I have about a hundred on my phone and read about one a week.

Having said that, I'll never buy a kindle or an ipad. I like ebooks because on my phone they are easier to read and more convenient to carry. Having a big ass kindle or ipad defeats the point for me. I don't understand why you'd want to read a book on anything bigger than an iphone.

What Macmillian should do is take away Amazons rights to sell their ebooks and just start selling them off their website or off of a competitors site. Sell them in an html or doc format which can still be read by kindle users but doesn't have to pay Amazon a dime.

Screw Amazon. The ones they really hurt with their move was the authors. I'll never buy another book from their site again.

[guessingo]

I actually didn't realize that only 10% of a books sales price is for the printing and distribution of the book. One of brandons links was to an author who blogged on that (I forgot who).

This might be part of the problem. The pereception is there is no cost to the publisher for a next ebook. People (including me) did not realize the up front cost of editing, design, cover, marketing, etc...

[Silk]

Exactly, Wilson. Even if an author could switch publishers at the drop of a hat, who's to say it won't happen to anyone else? One would think Amazon wouldn't be that dumb twice, but then again, one would thikn they wouldn't be that dumb once.

guessingo: That's part of the problem as far as the customers are concerned, yes. The thing is, this isn't about the customers. To be honest, I don't think most any of this is related to customers at all, except insofar as Amazon can try to wrangle some kind of PR victory out of this whole mess.