Rupes Weighs In

So far I've been watching the Macmillan-Amazon feud with a degree of disinterest--- other than my wide-eyed jaw-dropping awe at Amazon's bad, irrational behavior, and my compassion for my fellow authors who are being screwed, I have no books with Macmillan, so I didn't really have a dog in the fight.

But now Rupert Murdoch has weighed in, suggesting to Amazon that it is, in fact, time to renegotiate his deal on ebooks. And since Murdoch (or "Rupes," as we-who-are-his-slaves fondly refer to him) owns HarperCollins, which has several of my books in print--- I am no longer a dispassionate observer. If Amazon decides to de-friend Harper in the same way it de-friended Macmillan, my lovely Praxis books will shift in category from "mid-list science fiction" to "hostage."

For what Rupes and Macmillan are asking Amazon to do is change their entire business model. Amazon's long-standing policy was to exchange profits for market share--- they would sell books at a loss, in hopes that it would drive competitors out of business. Their plan involved nothing less than crushing every independent bookstore in North America, then taking over their market share. (Which is the same plan as that used by Barnes & Noble and Borders, by the way.)

Macmillan asked itself the question, "Is it in our interests to see independent bookstores wiped out and Amazon to have such a huge market share?", and came to the obvious conclusion. A year's negotiation proved fruitless, and the war was on.

Amazon's position re the Kindle has always been based on a kind of bluff: they acted as if they had a monopoly on e-readers, and they negotiated from this stance, but of course it wasn't true. There were the Sony Reader and others. But when the iPad appeared, that shattered the illusion. I don't think it's a coincidence that this feud went public the same week the iPad was released.

But anyway, I now have a dog in the fight--- well not a dog really, but a weeny, sickly little puppy trying to snarl with its cute little milk teeth. And the puppy is tied to a stake on the middle of a colosseum in which giant fighting robots are running around firing rockets, machine-gun bullets, and tactical nuclear weapons at each other. And just sort of hoping for the best, because that's all it can do.

Speeding Past in the Blink of an Eye

While I was enjoying a pleasurably distracting weekend and unable to properly follow events, a huge earth-shaking contretemps broke out between publisher Macmillan/St. Martin's/Tor and Amazon, to determine which business model will prevail on the Internets of the Future. The whole thing seems to have flown past in an eyeblink, to what some are claiming as a sort of resolution, but which really isn't, as yet.

Scott Westerfield has a good analysis of the situation here.

John Scalzi explains why Amazon is being stupid right here.

But why, you ask, does this concern you? You are, after all, a reader, not a Macmillan author.

Why it concerns you is that Amazon has stated that they'll eventually have to cave to Macmillan, which convinced a lot of people the situation was over--- but they haven't actually caved yet. In the meantime Amazon has, essentially, unfriended every writer in the Macmillan/St. Martin's/Tor stable. You can't buy their books on Amazon, not unless they're offered by a third party.

This doesn't affect me, fortunately. I have no books with Tor at the moment. (Wait a minute--- I just realized that there was a shift in publishing that didn't fuck me over! What the hell . . . ? This never happens!)

But the crisis does affect Macmillan authors, including all of those science fiction and fantasy writers at Tor, which is the largest US publisher of fantasy and science fiction.

Any number of my friends are published by Tor, including--- just off the top of my head--- Daniel Abraham, Charles Stross, Melinda Snodgrass, Steve Gould, Laura Mixon, Cory Doctorow, and my former student Ian Tregillis, whose terrific first novel, Bitter Seeds, will appear from Tor in April. (And if you're a Tor author and a friend of mine and I haven't mentioned you here, it's not because I secretly hate you, it's because my brain is defective and/or I don't actually know who's publishing you. So don't put out a contract on me, okay?)

(Okay, paranoid fit over now. We now return you to the ongoing brouhaha.)

I'm going to follow John Scalzi in suggesting that you all go out and buy some books by Tor/Macmillan authors--- naturally, from places other than Amazon.

(And if you buy one of mine while you're at it, well, that's only natural.)