I've seen at least four stories today on the Scott Turow editorial in this week's New York Times (for example, here and here). Turow's editorial was a mishmash of all sorts of trending stories, offering his comments on used books, libraries, the Kirtsaeng decision, Amazon, and who knows what else. He has been derided, and rightly so in my opinion, for taking a somewhat extreme and out of touch view of the current marketplace. But what I think often gets lost in this knee-jerk reactionary stuff (both on the part of the originator and the various respondents) is that these pieces often do...

Libraries. The Internet. Pirate sites. According to author Scott Turow's recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, these things are all to blame for the "Slow Death of the American Author." Best-selling novelist and Author's Guild president Scott Turow discusses how all of these entities are creating an environment where authors will make less money, and entities such as Amazon will get to pocket it all. “But it is the latest example of how the global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams. It seems almost every player—publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars—is vying for position at authors’...

The Google Books lawsuit proceeds apace. paidContent and CNet report that, in Google’s latest filing, the search giant is appealing the court’s decision to certify class action status for the Authors Guild. Google argues that the majority of writers actually approve of its scanning (58% according to a Google-commissioned survey), and that its scanning to provide search capability is a transformative fair use. Google suggests that even if the court rules it is not fair use in general, it will still have to decide on a case by case basis whether each individual book is or not. Is Google...

PaidContent has a copy of Google’s motion for summary judgment, and a summary of what it says. Google makes the case that its scanning of all those copyrighted books qualifies as fair use, and cites numerous examples of beneficial outcomes that have come out of the availability of that information to be searched. It also insists that inclusion in the search has been beneficial, not harmful, to sales of the books it has scanned, and even well-known literary agencies like William Morris recognize that. The Authors Guild was expected to file its own motion later today, but I haven’t...

Senator Charles Schumer (D, New York) has an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal calling upon the Department of Justice to drop its lawsuit against the agency price publishers and Apple. Schumer seems to have bought into the Author’s Guild’s rationale, which he quotes and references, painting Amazon as the evil monopolist and publishers as beleaguered innovators who came up with a way to nobble Amazon’s unfair advantage and are now being punished for it. The suit, Schumer writes, “could wipe out the publishing industry as we know it, making it much harder for young authors to get...

The time to submit comments to the DoJ about the proposed price-fixing settlement has ended, and the Authors Guild filed its own comments on Monday. Publishers Weekly has a post containing the full text of the rather lengthy open letter from Executive Director Paul Aiken, as well as some commentary. There’s not a whole lot that’s new in the Authors Guild’s position from the various editorials of theirs we’ve covered over the last few months, but it does go into a considerable amount of detail as to what they see as Amazon’s domination of many areas of the publishing...

Judge Denny Chin has dealt Google a setback today in the Google Books scanning lawsuit, ruling (PDF) against Google’s arguments that the Author’s Guild should not be allowed to stand in for its individual members and that the three individual plaintiffs should be denied class-action status. Google had argued that individual plaintiff participation would be necessary to decide on issues of fair use, but the judge didn’t agree. Google had also argued that the three plaintiffs weren’t sufficiently representative of all classes of book publishing as a whole, but Chin felt books could be considered by category—they didn’t...

PaidContent has a piece by Jeff John Roberts looking at the current status of the Authors Guild vs. Google court case involving Google’s actions in scanning millions of copyrighted e-books. The case is moving slowly forward with new motions presented today, that Judge Chin has promised to rule on later. The Authors Guild wants Chin to okay its request for class-action status to let the US’s writers sue together. Google argues that the Guild doesn’t have standing to sue on authors’ behalf, and the suits should be brought by individual authors who feel they have been wronged—and that the...

Remember when Barnes & Noble proclaimed it would not carry any books offered by Amazon publishers (in stores—if people wanted to order them from BN.com, they would be happy to ship them) if B&N would not be able to carry the e-book versions for its Nook? At the time, I wrote: B&N is making a lot of noise, but then turning around and trying to have its cake and eat it too. I predict this principled stand will last only until Amazon comes out with a best-selling title that everyone wants to get their hands on....

Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, has written an op ed for Bloomberg in which he reiterates a number of the same points of view concerning a DoJ investigation of publisher price collusion that have been posted to the Authors Guild blog in recent weeks. Turow is concerned that if the government rolls back agency pricing, it will hand Amazon power sufficient to kill off its competitors, including publishers, and thus harm the diversity of titles available to readers. Turow discusses a lot of the anti-competitive things Amazon has done, including its delisting of IPG e-books and its...

Is Amazon evil or just good at business? We’ve carried a couple of articles lately whose authors believe the latter, but it’s never been a mystery what side the Authors Guild comes down on. The Guild has just posted a lengthy essay to its blog laying out what it sees as Amazon’s predatory pricing and anticompetitive business practices. While admitting Amazon has innovated with the creation of the Kindle, the Guild holds that Amazon used its pre-existing position as the world’s leading print book vendor to leverage its e-book position into a near-monopoly. It cites Amazon’s removal of the...

The Authors Guild blog has an interesting piece looking at Amazon’s growth in light of a decline in antitrust enforcement. For background, it brings up the Bloomberg Businessweek story I covered the other day, it moves on to excerpt a piece in Harpers by Barry Lynn that compares Amazon to the current state of other monopolized markets, such as the chicken-raising industry: Mr. Lynn makes the case that Amazon’s dominance isn’t just a story of an industry disrupted by online commerce and digital upheaval, it’s about the abandoning of New Deal era protections of retailers in...