Amazon

Posts Tagged ‘Amazon’

Amazon is restoring Macmillan “Buy Now” buttons

Friday, February 5th, 2010

The New York Times is reporting that Amazon and Macmillan have come to an agreement, the details of which have not been made public. Amazon is reportedly in the process of restoring the “buy now” buttons to Macmillan books although not all titles have been restored yet.

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

New comments from Macmilan CEO

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Macmillan’s CEO John Sargent has made new comments about Amazon and Macmillian.

To: Macmillan Authors and Illustrators and
Cc: Literary Agents
From: John Sargent

I am sorry I have been silent since Saturday. We have been in constant discussions with Amazon since then. Things have moved far enough that hopefully this is the last time I will be writing to you on this subject.

Over the last few years we have been deeply concerned about the pricing of electronic books. That pricing, combined with the traditional business model we were using, was creating a market that we believe was fundamentally unbalanced. In the last three weeks, from a standing start we have moved to a new business model. We will make less money on the sale of e books, but we will have a stable and rational market. To repeat myself from last Sunday’ s letter, we will now have a business model that will ensure our intellectual property will be available digitally through many channels, at a price that is both fair to the consumer and that allows those who create and publish it to be fairly compensated. (more…)

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 19 Comments »

SFWA removes Amazon.com links from website

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Due to Amazon.com’s removal of many of our authors’ books from its ordering system, we are removing Amazon.com links from our website. Our authors depend on people buying their books and since a significant percentage of them publish through Macmillan or its subsidiaries, we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased.

To that end, our volunteers are in the process of redirecting book links to indiebound.org, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Borders.

Many authors are being hit hard by this, so we encourage you to seek out new places to find their books.

Edited to add: It is worth noting, that if a book is only available on Amazon, we are leaving the link in place. Our goal is to make sure that it is possible to order our members’ fiction. Hurting authors to make a point about a publishing model is bad business, for anyone.

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 85 Comments »

Dispatches from the Ebook Wars: Macmillan vs. Amazon

Monday, February 1st, 2010

by Victoria Strauss

For some time, publishers and others have been concerned about Amazon’s policy of pricing ebooks at $9.99, regardless of the price tag publishers put on them. Many feel that Amazon’s discounted ebook pricing is an attempt to control and monopolize the ebook market by forcing a pricing standard. Some in the publishing industry have even called the practice predatory. (Readers, of course, are more likely to applaud cheaper ebooks, but many publishers, which have fixed costs to earn back whether a book is ink on paper or pixels on a screen, regard the $9.99 price point as a major threat to revenue.)

Over the weekend, a publisher finally went head-to-head with Amazon on this issue. (more…)

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan, Writer Beware
Posted in SFWA Blog, Writer Beware | No Comments »

Amazon’s response to Macmillan

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Conversation has swept through the internet, and science fiction and fantasy authors in particular, about Amazon’s decision to remove Macmillan titles from their stock after a disagreement about pricing.

Today, Amazon has posted a statement about their policy.

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

Why My Books Are No Longer Available on Amazon.com

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

by Tobias Buckell

This is long.

Like, really long.

And talks about the intimate details of publishing in long and meandering manner.

I tried to make it shorter, I really did, but as Mark Twain once said, I didn’t have the time. So I wrote this instead.

So as of right now, you can’t buy my books via Amazon, as they have stopped selling all Macmillan books (both mailing print books to you, and selling Kindle books).

So, Amazon wants to sell books for $9.99 or less, my publisher wants to sell books for a more dynamic range of $5.99 to $14.99.

Right. So Amazon and Macmillan are in the middle of negotiations about how to sell eBooks. Amazon had, for a while, paid publishers an agreed upon price, and then discounted them to $9.99. Amazon’s reasoning: this would move eBooks, in particular Kindle eBooks (and maybe some Kindles, though I think Amazon’s creating a Kindle was to move more eBooks).

Publishers would like to be able to set eBooks at a higher price, say $15, then degrade the price over time to a much lower price. How much? CEO of Macmillan says “Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99.” (more…)

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan, Tobias Buckell
Posted in SFWA Blog | 52 Comments »

Amazon stops carrying Macmillan titles

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

In an apparent pricing dispute, Amazon.com has removed Macmillan titles from its lists. According to the NY Times:

“Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise to the price of e-books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books,”

Edited to add: 1/30/2010 Macmillon’s CEO confirms that this is occurred after a negotiation about prices.In a paid advertisement in Saturday’s Publisher’s Lunch, he says:

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

Tags: Amazon, Macmillan
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

Amazon Kindle Contract Review and Annotation

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

Kindle by members of the Contract Committee

This .pdf document is an annotation of the Amazon Kindle contract as it was posted on Amazon’s Web site (downloaded in February, 2008). Members of the SFWA Contract Committee compiled these annotations solely as an educational service to SFWA members. It is not legal advice and may not be relied on as such.

Our annotations consist of yellow-highlighting particular passages, then describing issues raised by the passage (using blue indented text). In a few cases we present new language (in blue highlight) that is relevant to an issue we raise.

We welcome comments or suggestions, particularly if Amazon amends the Kindle contract.

Tags: Amazon, business, contracts, internet, Kindle, online
Posted in Contracts and Copyrights, Information Center, SFWA Blog, Sample Contracts, The Business of Writing | 5 Comments »

Kindle limits the number of downloads?

Saturday, June 20th, 2009

This report from Gear Diary paints a unpleasant picture for Amazon’s download policy for Kindle. It seems that there’s a limit to how many times you can download a book, but that limit isn’t posted anywhere.

Here’s an excerpt of the article, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

The customer rep asked me to send every one of the books in my Amazon library to my iPhone. Most of them gave the message that they were sent but a number of them returned the message “Cannot be sent to selected device”.

“Oh that’s the problem,” he said “if some of the books will download and the others won’t it means that you’ve reached the maximum number of times you can download the book.”

I asked him what that meant since the books I needed to download weren’t currently on any device because I had wiped those devices clean and simply wanted to reinstall. He proceeded to tell me that there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it’s five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here’s the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again.

Tags: Amazon, Kindle
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

Posts Tagged ‘Amazon’