Happy
20th birthday Amazon!
Next
month marks a milestone for the folks at Amazon.com.
And
while I've sold books through Amazon, I can't bring myself to say,
“God bless Amazon” (unless we're talking about a rainforest).
Look,
twenty years ago there was no storm cloud that could have foretold
the disruption that could be wrought on the publishing industry by a
nerd from Princeton.
There
were no rules then. Thousands of hopeful e-entrepreneurs tried to
make a buck any way they could in the wild west that was gloriously
described as ecommerce. Everything from Pampers to Purina was
available online, and services from licit match making to illicit
rendezvous promised a brave new world, Y2K be damned.
In
that spirit, Jeff Bezos realized that book retailing was one of the
more moribund retail sectors with the newest rules written sixty
years earlier when publishers, desperate to sell books during the
depression, instituted “return” privileges to book stores in a
valiant attempt to keep the presses rolling.
And
forty years later Borders and Barnes & Noble learned to game the
system by lining their walls with enough titles to fill a 5,000
square foot showroom. The problem for publishers was, their books
were wall paper that changed every ninety days when the books were
returned for credit and perhaps then immediately reordered.
Bezos
saw a way to streamline book selling that concentrated on deep
discounts and cheap and fast shipping. And every book that was
available would be available, either through his warehouse network or
directly, shipped from the publisher. And that worked so well he
expanded into Pampers and Purina after the first wave of start-ups
crashed and burned.
And
it was fun and exciting, especially because there were no rules.
After the tech bubble burst in 2000, legislators seemed especially
receptive to keep ecommerce growing, even though the local
communities the legislators represented were beginning to falter as
Main Street saw dollars floating away to other cities in other
states.
As
you read the attached newsletter, the portrait of a company that
believes it has an obligation to further disrupt the industry by
dictating business practices to its suppliers emerges. Now I suppose
if you're building cars, suppliers come and go and if you lose one,
another will take its place producing an identical part to identical
specs. That's not really possible with books, although it seems Bezos
would like the industry to approximate such a scenario.
Another
article explains that some government lackey issued a patent to
Amazon for photographing objects against a white back ground. The
stupidity of some government employees is surpassed only by the
chutzpah of a company like Amazon that would file such an
application, perhaps with hopes that all photographic techniques
might be patented with royalties collected each year on April 15.
Amazon
is tax averse and drops some money here and there in an attempt to
alter the perception that they're bad neighbors, but Amazon
executives are asked not to visit certain states lest their presence
trigger local tax opportunities.
And
how could Amazon be bad? President Obama has twice visited their
warehouses, a seeming nod to today's youth that their future lies in
the services arena, supervised and judged by computers that will
eventually replace them and owned by companies that let their
employees pay the taxes that the companies themselves could otherwise
owe.
Sixty
Largest Publishers
Are
you curious about who the real heavy-hitters in publishing are by
sales rank? You'll find the list
here (hint: Pearson wins handily).
Amazon
Tries to Bully Hachette...
Apparently
the
feud between Amazon and Hachette has escalated to the point that
Amazon has dropped some Hachette titles, dragged their feet on
shipping their titles, and now it seems won't even be offering JK
Rowling's newest, The
Silkworm,
as a conventional book, although ebook and audible versions can be
ordered. The roots of the conflict aren't clear yet.
...and
Bonnier
Flexing
one's monopolistic muscle seems to be addictive as Amazon
attempts to also dictate terms to Bonnier, a Swedish publishing
conglomerate. The debate
over the heft and scope of Amazon's influence has re-ignited.
Backlist
eBook Rights
The
question about ownership of rights to produce ebooks will apparently
be debated in federal court as HarperCollins sues
to block Open Roads release of an ebook of the 1972 children's
title, Julie
of the Wolves.
Out-Amazoning
Amazon
An
extremely ambitious entrepreneur makes some telling statements on the
demise of Borders and starts an
enterprise to compete with Amazon...on price!
Book
Business or eBook Business?
I
get that ebooks are here to stay. But readers
prefer ink and paper books 60% to 40% and publishers prefer
conventional books overwhelmingly ($). So why does this email
edition of Book Business have seven out of nine articles focusing
on ebooks?
Amazon!
Really?
I'm
guessing that somewhere in your house you have a photograph of
someone or something in front of a white background. Henceforth, all
such pictures will be covered by a newly granted patent owned by
Amazon. Stephen Colbert
comments on the idiocy of it all.
Mass
Market Paperback Pioneer Dies
Mass
market paperbacks appeared in the
late 1930's and were as disruptive to the industry as ebooks were
over a half century later. Their sales didn't surpass hardcover
sales until 1960, possibly with the help of Oscar
Dystel who introduced Catcher
in the Rye, East of Eden
and many more classics for Bantam Books. Mr Dystel died at the age
of 101 on May 28.
Do
the Graphic Arts Include Printing?
Every
printer I work with (and myself) has horror stories about working
with a clueless designer whose knowledge begins and ends at a Mac Pro
screen. The trouble is, after twenty some years of digital design
advances, many
of the instructors remain as clueless as their students about the
leap from RGB to CMYK. Does it matter? Is print THAT important.?
Check
this out. (Hint: If your designer knows what rubylith is, they're
okay.)
Which
Cities Read the Most?
Data
collected between April 2013 and April 2014 (based on book and
magazine sales) ranks Ann Arbor 6th
in book purchases in America. The top twenty cities are listed here.
But it's been pointed out that if you factor in the community's
library circulation, the
rankings are pure bs. They simply rank per capita online book
spending which may not correlate to book reading.
In
an effort to protect people from dealing with some of the more
distasteful life experiences, certain
colleges want to put warning labels on literature so readers
aren't confronted with the more painful episodes that life presents.
But isn't that the point of reading literature, to be challenged?
Final
Thought
“One
of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic
pictures.”
