I don't get out much … because every time I get out, I cause trouble.
Take for instance this little entry: I attended a regional writers and publishers conference because I am trying to get myself out in the market so people will buy my books. One of the points of discussion was a February 16, 2012, Authors Guild Blog post titled, "Amazon Innovation and the Rewards of the Free Market". [http://blog.authorsguild.org/2012/02/16/amazon-innovation-and-the-rewards-of-the-free-market/]
One of the presenters had an opinion similar to this Authors Guild article; whether this person developed the opinion because of the article or possessed it previously was obvious to me, but I was taught not to judge so I'll stay away from making judgments from the evidence presented. There was a certain dislike in this person's tone of voice when talking about Amazon, a tone that was definitely not present when the person spoke about Barnes & Noble.
And that brings me to my 'little rant.'
At this conference—in fact because of this person's advice—I am starting the recommended Blog to get myself and my product out in the public's view. Although this may be my only post, as I intend to make full use of the Fair Use Clause in our copyright laws.
Let me summarize the article:
Authors Guild is not happy with Amazon and its business practices, particularly when it comes to…well…selling books, particularly, e-books.
However, enough of that. It is just another David and Goliath story about Goliath (Amazon) and David (major publishing houses). Macmillan is the example Authors Guild tried to use, which I find may be a poor analogy. Perhaps Clash of the Titans would be a more fitting analogy.
It seems The Authors Guild thinks e-books should sell for the same price as the traditional paper books and is upset because of what The Authors Guild calls "Predatory Pricing" by Amazon.
Alliteration is an excellent tool when you begin a campaign against something: anything. A good catch phase will rally the forces you are looking to rally. Predatory Pricing, is catchy and it has that disdain built into the phrase. Just say it a few times, Predatory Pricing; Predatory Pricing; Predatory Pricing, the "PR" sound forces your face to pucker up to utter the disdainful expression. Kinda makes you start to hate Amazon, huh?
A very good article, since I saw that disdain in the presenter's face as we were counseled to stay away from Amazon and go with B&N. The psychology of opinion articles is something that most people never notice, they simply read the article as fact and form the opinion intended by the expert writer (pundit, opinion peddler, talking head etc.), who, by the way, is happier than a pig in slop that you agree since that was the intention.
Let's take a look at the psychology of this article:
The Authors Guild writes:
Our article from two weeks ago, Publishing's Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory, and similar articles spur frequent comments online that Amazon is simply reaping the rewards of its innovation, that its growing dominance of book publishing is merely a demonstration that the free market is functioning as it should. This isn't really what's been happening.
1: Opinion, pure and simple. The following three paragraphs set the reader's mind up with a brief history of what the opinion peddler wants him to know about Amazon.
The Authors Guild writes:
Useful innovation should of course be rewarded, but we've long had laws in place (limits on the duration and scope of patent protections, antitrust laws, stricter regulation of industries considered natural monopolies) that aim to prevent innovators and others from capturing a market or an industry. There's good reason for this: those who capture a market tend to be a bit rough on other participants in the market. They also tend to stop innovating.
2: The first step on the path to shaping an opinion to one's will is to point out ONE'S OWN VERSION of what is fair as one sees it. [See comment 8]
The Authors Guild writes a couple of paragraphs giving the readers whose minds they are trying to shape a brief but informative synopsis of what the history of the facts are:
Amazon's first Kindle, released in November 2007, was certainly innovative, but its key breakthrough wasn't any particular piece of technology. Sony had already commercialized e-ink display screens for handheld e-books in September 2006. (E Ink, a Cambridge company co-founded by MIT Media Lab professor Joseph Jacobson developed the displays used by both companies.) Amazon's leap was to marry e-ink displays to another existing technology, wireless connectivity, to bring e-book shopping and downloading right to the handheld device.
Amazon's innovation, in other words, was to untether the Sony device and put a virtual store inside it. This is no small achievement, and Jeff Bezos's particular genius seems to be his ability to grasp the transformative potential of this sort of thing long before others do, just as he saw the potential of databases and the Internet to facilitate shopping for books and the potential for one-click shopping to ramp up online sales before most others had caught on.
Amazon's reward for developing the wireless e-reader should have been that it would become a significant vendor of e-books and earn a profit commensurate with the value it added to the publishing ecosystem. Whether it would then continue to be a significant e-book vendor should have depended on whether it continued to innovate and provide good service to its customers. Amazon's reward should not have included being able to combine its wireless e-reader, deep pockets, and an existing dominant position in a related, but separate, market — the online market for physical books — to prevent other vendors from entering the e-book market. Amazon's reward as an innovator, in other words, shouldn't be getting to wall itself off from competition.
3: The massaging of minds to mold them properly begins. It is easy to tell because now they begin using the compound verbs [should, could, would, which are normally followed by 've or the complete word have] SHOULD HAVE BEEN a statement of opinion by the author of this post as to what Amazon SHOULD BE ENTITLED TO. An opinion that is then expanded—anytime I hear those verbs used, I know they [the pundits] are no longer in the realm of what is but what they wish it were, or, what they believe should or should not be.
The Authors Guild writes:
By all appearances, this is precisely what Amazon was trying to pull off two years ago, when it removed the buy buttons from nearly every Macmillan book. Amazon removed the buy buttons for both e-books and, stunningly, print books, even though its disagreement with Macmillan was confined to the sales terms for e-books. Amazon had about 90% of the market for e-books at the time, but that market was then quite small: Macmillan could handle Amazon's e-book blackout indefinitely. Amazon's 75% of the online print book market, on the other hand, provided real leverage on Macmillan, and Amazon chose to use that leverage. By using its print book dominance to dictate terms in the nascent e-book market, Amazon crossed a clear, anticompetitive line.
4: Once again we see the writer speculating to shape opinions and criticizing Amazon's actions (the David versus Goliath hook). The realm of what is versus what they wish it were, is clearly evident.
The Authors Guild writes:
One anticompetitive tactic in service of another
5: Sub-headings are highlighted psychological opinion shapers in disguise followed with more of what should be fair in his opinion, as categorized by the opening statement of the following paragraph.
But it was even worse than that. Amazon had deployed its buy-button removal weapon before, but never so publicly, never on such a massive scale, and never (to our knowledge)…
6: Does the writer have personal knowledge because he was in on Amazon's decision? How did he come to this knowledge, or lack thereof?
as a means of shielding its ability to use a separate anticompetitive tactic: its practice of routinely selling e-books at a loss. Such practices, commonly known as predatory pricing, are a means of using superior capital resources not to innovate nor to provide better service, but to weaken or eliminate competition.
7: The use of alliteration as a powerful tool is demonstrated in this opinion piece, power applied a bit stronger to shift the reader to his side and continues this in the following paragraph. Now that the catchphrase has been used, it must be hammered into the readers' mind.
The Authors Guild writes:
In Amazon's hands, predatory pricing can be a particularly potent weapon. Surely no retailer in American history has had anything approaching Amazon's database of deep, detailed, real-time market knowledge.
8: I BEG TO DIFFER!
Since 1870 when Rockefeller created Standard Oil, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil] EVERY retailer and wholesaler have been trying to monopolize their respective markets. That is the reason the aforementioned laws in their second paragraph were created. Look at Wal-Mart, Microsoft and the multitude of guilds and associations, including major publishers, who demand exclusive submissions from authors or our books don't even get a cursory look by an editor's flunky. And, if we followed those guidelines it would take in the neighborhood of a decade to get our manuscripts looked at by the top ten houses since their response time is slower than the Second Coming of Christ.
The Authors Guild writes:
This database eliminates the guesswork from marketing, as Amazon can run countless pricing experiments and immediately analyze the results. With this information, predatory prices can become smart bombs that are precisely targeted to maximize the sales of the latest Kindle to the most desirable categories of consumers, for example, or to maximize the losses of an incipient competitor.
9: Once again what is versus what they wish it were is clearly evident. More pure unadulterated opinion! The alliterative catch phrase continues to be pounded into the readers' minds. By the end of this article, Predatory Pricing along with Amazon should be as disliked as a son-in-law that beats your daughter.
The Authors Guild writes:
… in service of a third [already mentioned sub-headings]
could, in turn, help Amazon buttress its other critical barrier to entry into the e-book marketplace:…
10: Here we go with the PP PHRASE!
The Authors Guild writes:
… its use of a proprietary e-book format, rather than the industry-standard e-pub format. Kindle owners would naturally be reluctant to switch to incompatible devices after they had sunk money into a personal e-library of Kindle editions. Viewed this way, Amazon's costs incurred in selling e-books at a loss amounted to an investment in erecting walls around its young, booming e-book marketplace.
11: And now the opinion peddler attacks the Amazon innovation he praised at the beginning of his piece: Proprietary Format. Would someone please explain what industry standard is, because this pundit is certainly misinformed. Take for instance, the Automotive INDUSTRY; if this person had anything to say about it, Chevy parts would mount readily on a Dodge or Ford following the AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY STANDARD mentality.
Microsoft and Apple would have stolen and improved the same operating system from the original system creators instead of creating two completely different systems.
Is anyone aware that all the gasoline in the country goes in the same pipeline to its final distribution points? Why do you think refineries are all concentrated in the same area? So they can all syphon from the same massive pipe and add their patented sweeteners to make it Chevron or Texaco products. Industry standards such as Standard Oil which was supposedly disbanded by trust-busting legislation! Once again what is versus what they wish it were!
The Authors Guild writes:
The more Amazon succeeded in locking customers in to Kindle's device and format, the less rewarding the market for any potential competitor. Amazon's investment could pay off handsomely as the e-book market took off.
12: Let's change a few words in this 34-word sentence: replace Amazon with Microsoft; Kindle with Windows and e-book market with Operating System. Take a look:
The more Microsoft succeeded in locking customers in to Windows device and format, the less rewarding the market for any potential competitor. Microsoft's investment could pay off handsomely as the Operating System market took off.
We're no longer talking Amazon, are we? Hence, Sam Walton, Bill Gates and Paul Allen's massive fortunes!
If I were writing this to a less enlightened audience, I would comment on the fact that industry standard for writers is sentences that run no more than nineteen words, as the average reader can't assimilate much more than that in one sentence (this one for instance is 42 words). Or that is what I have been told when people [editors] read my thirty- and forty-word complete-thought sentences. But, I digress.
The Authors Guild writes:
Amazon's blackout of Macmillan's titles came at a critical moment. Barnes & Noble, Amazon's most significant bookselling rival, had just begun shipping its Nook e-reader the month before the blackout. The Nook was the first direct threat to Amazon's e-book dominance, the first wireless e-ink challenger to the Kindle. Though sales of the Nook were reportedly brisk, Barnes & Noble could never hope to win a war of financial attrition with Amazon. If Amazon could compel publishers to fall in line with its predatory pricing of e-books, it could eliminate a thinly capitalized but potent (because of its physical, brick-and-mortar presence) competitor from the e-book market. It could smother Barnes & Noble's Nook before it could pose a genuine challenge.
13: Pure and simple opinion by the author who is looking to convince you that barbarians are at the gate if you choose Kindle over Nook, Amazon over Barnes & Noble which, in his opinion, uses industry standards because they follow Sony's e-ink format.
By the way, what happened to Beta over VHS? Sony's Beta Format was not used for the same indirect reason: economy! Except, in this case Sony's format lost the economic battle and the whole world went with the inferior system: VHS. Where was The Authors Guild after the industry made my thousand-dollar Sony Betamax obsolete? Sony's better mousetrap was benched because marketing said a two hour tape would keep potential buyers away.
The Authors Guild writes:
Amazon backed down — though not before decrying Macmillan's "monopoly" over its books — and restored the print and e-book buy buttons. Macmillan and its thousands of authors regained access to the marketplace where 75% of online book buying transpires. The buy-button removal tactic had, for once, backfired on Amazon; the publicity over the blackout had taken a decidedly negative turn before the company changed course. Barnes & Noble would get a toehold in the e-book market, and, as we described in our last post, would turn out to be a surprisingly nimble and innovative competitor in the e-book market.
That rare setback for Amazon may yet prove to have been but a speed bump: through creative use of its capital and ever-growing market power, by compelling publishers to participate in its free book-of-the-month club for Kindle owners, by requiring public libraries to redirect their patrons to Amazon's commercial website to borrow books for their Kindles, by starting an imprint to compete for authors now published by the largest commercial houses, and, no doubt, by countless uses of its powerful database of consumer behavior, Amazon continues to tighten its grip on the book industry. Its ambitions haven't scaled back, and Barnes & Noble, still in the game (in no small part because of its success with the Nook), remains its most significant impediment.
14: If you investigate Standard Oil practices and apply them to Amazon's—or Wal-Mart's, for that matter—you will discover that this is not some new tactic but the Industry Standard Model for dominating a market. (Has anyone ever heard of Machiavellianism?) Standard Oil did it by rebating freight charges to its member companies and not the little guys in the market with them, until they were either members of the trust or had gone under. Amazon will do it the same way as Wal-Mart, by dictating to their providers the terms of their business, IF you want to do business with them. You do have the choice of not doing business with Amazon, Wal-Mart or anyone else whose policies you dislike. However, cutting off the biggest merchandiser/distributor significantly cuts down the potential size of your market.
The Authors Guild writes:
We aren't Barnes & Noble's champions, or at least we aren't their champions by choice. We'd favor a far more diverse and robust retail landscape for books, and we encourage all readers to patronize their local bookstores as they would their farmers' markets or any other businesses that enrich the quality of life in their towns and neighborhoods. But here's where we are: Barnes & Noble is book publishing's sole remaining substantial firewall. Without it, browsing in a bookstore would become a thing of the past for much of the country, and we would largely lose the most important means for new literary voices to be discovered.
15: In this paragraph the opinion peddler proceeds to deny that he likes B&N and does not like Amazon, and appeals to the reader's sense of fairness, once again, what is versus what they wish it was!
The Authors Guild writes:
A truly competitive, open market has no indispensable player that can call the shots. The book publishing industry has such a player, and Amazon is poised and by all appearances eager to use its muscle to rip up the remaining physical infrastructure of book retailing and the vital book-browsing ecosystem it supports.
If Amazon succeeds, the free market will have had little to do with it.
16: Big publishing houses have been doing this to authors since the first printed book was put out to the mass market. As authors, you should know the hoop jumping we are put through by petty editors that simply scratch a "no thanks" to your query letter and return it to you in your SASE. Some don't even have the courtesy of using company stationary to tell you to stick it in a very dark spot and never let your manuscript see the light of day again.
Don't get me wrong, all I am saying is that if you want to play in this market, as with any market, you have to play with the bullies as well as the nice people. I paid a Vanity Publisher big money I didn't have for them to publish my first book and they did publish it: print-on-demand, no orders, no sales. They had promised marketing help after the release, but what they failed to mention is that they had three additional-charge packages ranging from nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars to a sizable, several thousand dollars, and which package would I like?
I paid Amazon thirty-nine dollars for their extended distribution channels, to distribute my book anywhere. My books are available as e-books and through their printer, CreateSpace, as print-on-demand. When I sold a few books there was a direct deposit to my bank account. Amazon did not ask me to do this or that, or send a query letter and sweat out the time until they decided whether my book was worthy. They assumed we are professionals and could deliver the best product we could. Four days later, I had a quality proof in my hands, I approved the proof and that was that. The Vanity Publisher would not even convert the book to an e-book format as I was informed was included when I bought their DELUXE package. Three representatives later, their stand was that it was not in the written contract, but for an additional two hundred ninety-nine dollars they would be happy to provide the service.
Barnes & Noble did not ask for anything more than Amazon had: "Do you own the rights to the material you are going to publish with us?"
Granted, there was a lot of work done to the books before we could publish them in all formats, Kindle, print-on-demand and Nook. But with time and patience the books are out in the market. All we need is sales and we will be on somebody's best seller's list.
As far as The Authors Guild blog post, Amazon, Innovation, and the Rewards of the Free Market it is simply a group that is not pleased with someone's (Amazon's) business practices and wants to tilt at windmills, hoping that Amazon is forced to charge more for e-books, so that there is less of a gap between the price of an e-book and the outrageously priced books, Macmillan and other publishers get for the paper product.
Amazon is selling Proprietary reader tablets and obviously wants to maintain the cost of e-books low. They'll sell them at a loss so long as people buy them. The rub is that if someone has an e-book, the chances of them buying the paper product are next to none; therefore, publishers are in a tizzy.
And please remember that what Macmillan and all publishers want is for their books—including e-books—to sell for as much as possible. But also remember, the cost for an e-book is nowhere near the cost for paper ink and cardboard.
