Publishers are not wrong to blame Amazon for swinging a wrecking ball into the crumbling structures of the publishing industry. In its latest round of contract negotiations, Amazon is said to have demanded extraordinary powers for a retailer. It wants the right to print books itself using Print-On-Demand technology if publishers run out of stocks, and it wants Most Favoured Nation status, demanding that publishers offer Amazon the same discounts it offers other promoters, which would also cover publisher's own discounts on their websites. Even though books have a relatively small sliver of the market share of total products sold in Jeff Bezos' giant corporation, Amazon and books remain inextricably linked in the public mind for good reason. The volume of book sales that go through Amazon's portals dwarfs sales by any other retailer - as publishers, and high-profile literary agents who've had disputes with the retail giant have discovered, they cannot afford to lose the Amazon marketplace. Take the battle between Hachette, one of publishing's larger and more respected houses, and Amazon. The retailer has demanded big discounts from Hachette; the publishing house complains that books by its authors are being subjected to delayed shipping. Recently, a German trade body filed a complaint alleging that Amazon misuses its market muscle after a German publisher made similar allegations of deliberately slowed sales. In an attempt to protect meatspace bookstores, the French government has taken measures to ensure that Amazon and other online retailers cannot offer free deliveries of discounted books.
There is little question that Amazon's insatiable appetite for discounts and its hardball approach to negotiations threaten conventional publishing. But then, conventional publishing has much to answer for. Traditional publishing has offered some irreplaceable services - editing and design skills, for instance - but it has been disastrously resistant to change. Slow to adapt to e-books, out of touch with readers, reluctant to pass on profits to authors: the complaints against Big Publishing are endless. It is surprising, in the face of their Amazon-sized problem, that Big Publishing has not been able to stand together, either by collectively negotiating contracts with the retailer or by opening their own one-stop online book depot. The most influential publishing houses act like dinosaurs in a world that's changed too fast for them.
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Hugh C Howey, the author of the bestselling Wool, has a controversial view in one of his blog posts: he sees Amazon as a company that passes on savings to "A) Readers in the form of lower prices and to: B) Authors in the form of higher pay". Others might not agree that Amazon is all that altruistic - there's little difference between its own self-publishing arm and conventional houses, for e.g - but Mr Howey has a point. The reason why Amazon can pass on benefits to readers and authors is not because it is more generous than big publishing, but because it uses a far more flexible business model.
Publishers are justly scared by the latest in this round of negotiations from big e-commerce behemoths; the industry is under serious threat. But Big Publishing's failure to create an alternative to Amazon that works better for both authors and readers is a bigger problem than anything Mr Bezos' backroom boys or Flipkart could send their way. Amazon is acting exactly like the big predator it is; but Big Publishing has never stopped acting like a dinosaur.