Comments on: Class Action Lawsuit Against Amazon and Publishers Misses the Mark

By: Theresa Moore

Theresa Moore — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:37:02 +0000

It is interesting to note that the independent bookstores are just as selfish as Amazon and other major chain stores when it comes to treating all books equally. They refuse to stock books published by independent authors, while claiming that there is not enough space. Well of course there isn’t. Publishers pay for the front shelves and other display space so that the independents are shoved into the back of the store. The issue is not DRM at all, but a consistent record by Amazon of holding large amounts of money earned from sales of the ebooks back from authors. They are not even sales, but fees to read the books on their Kindles, as well as other proprietary claims which give little consideration to authors. I have seen whole threads devoted to complaints from the authors themselves, in which they have seen their “sales” plummet to zero on the reports or interfered with by Amazon staff once they start making any real money. Others have seen their accounts frozen or suspended, or closed forever without any reason being given. In November of 2012 I finally closed my own account and pulled off all my ebooks from Amazon’s vast and cluttered website, and have found since that the other online book stores are no better at honoring the authors’ side of the contract. In this kind of anti-competitive atmosphere it is no wonder that many authors are giving up and fading into the woodwork, while the major publishers continue to dominate the bandwidth. If there should be any class action lawsuit, it should be against the seven instigators of the biggest scam on Earth for blocking competition from independent authors and publishers trying to earn an honest living from their work. We demand a free and open playing field.

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:52:54 +0000

Excellent point, Paul. I had that niggling in the back of my head as I was writing the article but couldn’t quite bring it out to express it. (Not enough caffeine yesterday morning.) Thanks for saying it so well!

By: Frank Lowney

Frank Lowney — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 14:13:47 +0000

Paul StJohn Mackintosh said, “Any of these bookstores could start their own small e-press in their back office.”
This is a really good point but often overlooked due, I suppose, to inertia of some sort. Without the capital-intensive requirements of print, anyone or any group can create and disseminate eBooks. Bookstores, writer collaboratives, professional and scholarly organizations or any group with a common interest in bringing a specific message or story to a specific audience.
We really don’t realize how free we are. We still, many of us, act as if the tyranny of print still binds us.

By: Paul StJohn Mackintosh

Paul StJohn Mackintosh — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 10:59:47 +0000

My first instinct is also to side with any assault on DRM. All the same, I agree that in this case the suit seems pretty confused, not least on file format versus DRM. Bookshops and small publishers are free to sell non-DRM’d Kindle-format books by themselves: Tartarus Press in the UK, for instance, already does a great job of this alongside DRM-free epubs. Fine, these aren’t offered through the Kindle Store, and the poor benighted reader has to work out how to actually sideload the damn things on to their machine, but they do have advantages – such as the file becomes your own, rather than controlled by Amazon. And meanwhile, Amazon also goes out of its way to open up its system to small publishers and self-publishers.

Any of these bookstores could start their own small e-press in their back office. Perhaps that’s the future they should be shooting for, instead of wasting time and money on these confused and distracting lawsuits. If their lawyer’s statement can be taken at face value, why are they sueing Amazon to do something they can do already?

By: Michael W. Perry

Michael W. Perry — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 02:43:23 +0000

I wish these independent stores well, but I doubt the solution to their troubles lies in selling ebooks. That market is tailor-made for a few big online retailers and perhaps speciality outlets for specific genres, such as mystery or scifi.

The real problem with getting ebooks into a wide variety of outlets isn’t DRM. It’s the hassle of all competing and incompatible formats. For print, I can send a couple of PDFs to Lightning Source and get worldwide distribution. For ebooks, I individually send different sorts of files with accompanying data to Amazon, Apple and Smashwords. And despite my best efforts, what readers get will look different on each.

Adding another distributor to that mix, particular one that’s likely to never have more than a single-digit market share, simply doesn’t make sense. And I don’t even insist on DRM. No, DRM isn’t the issue. Formats and ease of distribution are. And the Big Six no more want to deal with issues of multiple, incompatible vendors than I do.