The papers are full of anti-Amazon rhetoric which some may
suggest is being whipped up into a feeding frenzy within the publishing
marketplace. Amazon is being portrayed as the biggest bully ever to have
stepped into the publishing arena. But is this the case or is it another
attempt by the publishing majors to wrestle back some of the control they
happily gave the Seattle company, or a genuine grievance? How do consumers feel
about the latest public spat, do they really care and how do they actually perceive
Amazon? Do authors side with the retailer who has more than any single entity extended
their market, or do they side with the publishing majors and those A list
authors who may be suffering in this
conflict?
The issues facing the ebook publishing marketplace are wide
ranging and often interrelated, but often these only get raised and discuss as individual
issues. Some would suggest that the book supply chain is adversarial by nature and
can often be seen not as a supply chain, but as a ‘blame chain’. Yesterday it
was the book chains and their greed to secure additional discounts, today it is
Amazon’s same battle at a time when some major publishing houses are declaring
profit rises due to digital sales and growth. It’s somewhat ironic to wind to
the clock back just a few years to when publishers were claiming the true costs
of digital were far greater than many envisaged and they were losing out and
couldn't pay authors more.
The digital market has shifted significantly and mainly
thanks to Amazon and its continual exploration of the marketplace. They have
given us and invested in Marketplace, Creative Space, KDP, Audible, ABE,
Goodreads, Singles, Kidsspace and much more. They have raised the bar re author
royalties and whilst many publishers have started to raise the digital
royalties, they all too often pale into insignificance compared to those
offered by Amazon and followed by their competitors. Publishers claim that they
can make the difference and ‘make a book happen’, but although this may be true
in the physical market the digital one is effectively owned by Amazon. Interestingly
Amazon have also opened up the digital honesty box through KDP and in doing so
have given authors transparency on daily sales by title and region and paid
them monthly, again with total transparency.
If we step back and look at some of the digital issues some
would suggest that we often have little appetite to change and more easily
accept the status quo, often letting others take the risk and waiting to see if
they fail or succeed. We have lurched from knee jerk to knee jerk with the likes
of the ill-conceived Google book Settlement and Agency moves. Some would
suggest that these were primarily aimed at bringing in Google and Apple to
compete with Amazon but on their terms.
Today we have a marketplace that is still fixated with front
list in a digital world of virtual shelves that provide equal space to all content,
irrespective of its age. We have no, or few price points that are recognised by
consumers and this just promotes discounting across titles that should not be
discounted. We have continue to pour the physical into the digital container
and believe the job is done and in doing so undermine the physical product and
marketplace. We have generally failed to create new digital content that
encourages reading and compliments the physical book as Charles Dickens and
others did in the early age of mass reading and have choosen instead to stick
with the 256 page model fits all?
There are only two entities that truly matter in the value
chain; the author who puts in the creative content and the consumer who puts in
the cash. All the others have to add value and not just cost but also have to
often co-exist to maximise the efficiency across the chain.
