Laura Anne Gilman once again has a brilliant breakdown in her post here.
My first reaction: Dear Amazon, that word does not mean what you think it means. OF COURSE Macmillan has a monopoly on THEIR product (books/ebooks). DUH. That’s basic business. I have a monopoly on the books I write. Tobias Buckell posts along those lines.
What makes me the angriest is that readers/Kindle customers do not understand that what this is, is a battle between giants and the consumer is the one that is going to lose. This isn’t about price points for e-Books–because if it were, why then were all the print books taken out of the catalog. This is simple supply-chain economics.
My other huge beef? Is that Amazon once again pulled this tactic (1) over a weekend and (2) without informing its customers – who saw books disappear from their pre-order lists, from their wishlists, from their carts. No explanation until this lame response, buried in a forum that frankly, most customers do not read.
I have a Kindle. I’ve bought tons of books on it–because it’s easy to use, has wireless access and since I am an Apple computer user, I was able to buy books without having to use third-party software (early Sony Readers didn’t have Mac-compatble software). You know what? My recent edition is not even 90 days old, well within the return time period. I’m bloody well returning it. I’m angry and tired of feeling that Amazon is, however convenient for other types of purchases, acting like a twelve-year-old and not like a business.
Will I lose my books? No, because there is Kindle for the PC (and I can go back and re-add VMWare Fusion to my laptop and run a vritual Windows environment) and I understand there is Kindle for Mac coming soon. Will I continue to buy e-Books for my Kindle? Doubtful.I’ve already canceled several extant preorders. Sad, because due to my tiny apartment, this is often the only way I get to read and keep hardcover books. Yes, I could use the library, but often I am too busy to read the book within the alloted time span. Plus, I enjoy rereading my favorites.
So, I’ll continue on without the Kindle, reading books on my laptop and waiting for a better option. In the meantime, I’ve got a bunch of print books (mass market pb) that I haven’t read yet.
ETA: I just processed the online return form for the Kindle. This was my additional comment in "reason for return": "Due to Amazon’s recent removal of all Macmillan titles, I no longer wish to be a Kindle customer. I am very angry."
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Much ado?
I don’t see the big deal. Amazon made their point, they’re conceding, Macmillan can sell their books for $99.99 if they want. OK, so they didn’t do a great job of communicating. They were probably feeling the heat from all sides & rushed out a communique that could have waited for tomorrow when the legal beagles were there to vet it.
Personally, I’d rather have an iPad than a Kindle, but I’m not sure I’d buy either one if I were in the position to pick (I won the Kindle so someone else gave Amazon the $$$). It would have to replace one or both of my MacBook & iPhone, and I don’t see how they could. At least they work with Macs, which is more than I can say for most Sony products (which I won’t touch for that reason).
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Re: Much ado?
I think perhaps you are right. I’m just tired of Amazon doing these kinds of things on the weekend and without information. I lost a great many books from my wishlist, with no idea now what they were. Same with preorders and sample chapters. The least I would have expected is an email or a notice on the site. Perhaps I am overreacting and will regret my actions tomorrow, but that’s as it may be. They made me angry–and it’s rare that this happens very rarely to this extent with me.
re: iPad – I love the idea and not as a replacement so much but as an e-reader that does more. We’ll see if once I can touch/play with one at the Apple store if it will work for me.
One of the things I like about an e-book reader is the ability to increase the font size–especially like now with my whole eye thing. I’ll probably use my Sony reader for now (which I use with Calibre on my Mac) and read the non-DRM’d content that I already own.
FYI: An interesting thread on Laura Anne’s post.
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I just purchased the new!improved! Bebook, which has the wireless access to get your ebook fix nao. Um, I think it’ll mean bricks for your Kindle purchases (but it might not – aren’t they mobi?) but if you’re looking for an e-reader, it might be an option. I’ll report on it when I actually get it – they’re due to roll out late February (probably it’ll arrive while I’m at Escapade, and hang out on my porch all weekend, merrily laughing at me, the little bastard), so I can’t promise the moon and stars just yet. But still! Choice!
(And it’s got the SD-card slot that Kindle took out after the first edition, which was enough to make me cancel my order, being the type who wants to be able to maintain separate libraries.)
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Bebook sounds interesting. LMK what you think.
Kindle books are mobi, yes, but with DRM slathered on top for that yummy bricky goodness. I can still read the books I’ve purchased via Kindle for PC (if I reinstall my VMware), or wait until Kindle for Mac comes out. I can also read them on my iPhone.
I think for a while, I’ll be not buying ebooks of any sort and waiting to see what happens with the iPad.
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I had a lengthy discussion of this over at my LJ, and I find myself giving people lectures on distribution 1A. amazon is NOT a bookseller. They are a distributor. They offer books for sale at a discount (which they order from Ingram and Taylor just like everyone else, no special little elves in some basement printing up THEIR copie), and then they sell THESE copies RIGHT NEXT to those used copies for sale. I looked yesteday. You can order my book from them at a discounted price of $18.00. Or buy one used for $1.20. They don’t even have the FRIGGING courtesy to put the used book sales lower down on the page. Nope. Why? Because they get a cut from every sale, regardless.
People have emailed me and said, Wow, I never thought of that. DUH!
Plus, if this is about content and the people who produce the content (allegedly) should have control over the content, then, sorry, amazon. They have reached a point in their mentality where they think they are controllers of the content. No. You. Are. Not. You are a distributor. Say that three times.
They had an initial strategy that worked for them. They sold books at whopping discounts to capture the book-”selling” market. Notice I put that in quotes. That strategy worked. They thought they could do the same thing by selling e-books at a whopping loss so that they could monopolize the e-book market. Major difference here is that this market isn’t distribution driven. It’s technology driven. And the entity that has the coolest toys is going to win this battle. I’m putting my money on apple. I am so furious over this. If I could, I’d pull my books from amazon. I’m coming to believe having my books for sale there actually HURTS me.
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I’ve never been willing to buy in the kindle format (I hate those proprietary format wars), so I have a lot of PDFs. They are clunky but at least they’re transportable.