It’s dragging out, folks, this impasse. And it seems to have dragged otherwise good people into a shouting match. (I thought only politics did that. But then, everything is politics, no?*) Even the delightful Porter Anderson—a journalist who follows the publishing industry—reports “a volley of abuse” for something he’d written. “This person and I will never regain the friendly working relationship we’d had before,” he says. And that’s a shame.
Since I’ve mentioned Anderson, let’s start with his fine article.
✱ Time to dial it back?
Anderson points out Leon Festinger’s 1954 concept of cognitive dissonance:
[It’s] still one of the most accessible ways to understand what happens when we’re confronted with opposing beliefs, assumptions, loyalties.
The Festinger theory suggests that when we experience the uncomfortable friction of a new “truth” that conflicts with an existing “truth,” we’ll attempt to convince ourselves that no conflict exists. We’ll rush to one side or the other of the issue, in other words, and tell everybody that “the truth is plain as day.” Rationalize away the conflict. Walk it off.
The old line “Do as I say, not as I do” is a wry evocation of cognitive dissonance.
This is what’s happened to those of us in publishing right now. There’s no player in this technological disruption who is all good, no player who is all bad. There are many issues facing the industry, and no agreement on how to address them. In the meantime, a very real problem—the Hachette/Amazon standoff—is making things painful for authors and consumers. And folks have chosen sides.
Anderson urges civil conversation in this strong article, which will refer you to several other excellent commentaries. (We run in the same circles so there’s some duplication.)
✱ Who’s the underdog, really?
Writing for Gigaom, digital publishing reporter Laura Hazard Owen also notes “the battle between Amazon and Hachette has come to seem symbolic of a lot more than a fight between two companies.”
The wildly differing rhetoric used on each side provides some insight into why the negotiations seem so momentous, and it is one explanation for why it can be so difficult for the supporters of each side to find any common ground. Some of the most outspoken leaders of the self-publishing movement have adopted Tea Party-like rhetoric benefiting Amazon that can make it difficult for those from the “elite” world of traditional publishing to sympathize. Those traditional publishers, bestselling traditionally published authors and literary folk, on the other hand, tend toward anti-Amazon arguments that the self-publishing movement finds preposterous.
Amazon, meanwhile, has capitalized on many self-published authors’ sense of disenfranchisement to advance the idea that it is the champion of the underdog, despite the fact that it is a multibillion-dollar corporation.
Amazon is a larger company than any of the publishers it works with. Its revenue in 2013 was $74.5 billion. By contrast, the revenue generated by Hachette’s entire parent company, Lagardere, was $9.8 billion in 2013, with Hachette’s U.S. revenue totaling about $640 million. Though it is a much larger company than the publishers it does business with, Amazon has nonetheless successfully portrayed itself as the champion of the little guy.
You can read the whole article here.
✱ All writers are created equal?
Owen’s article mentioned and led me to this, the so-called Indie Author Manifesto. And while I absolutely believe that all human beings are created equal, you will have a hard time convincing me that all human beings who decide to put pen to paper are created equal. I’ve read The Bridges of Madison County, so I have firsthand knowledge.
Do all writers have a right to publish? Of course. But then, they always have had. Twenty years ago self-publishing was more difficult and more expensive (because, you know: printing), but anyone could write up a book and have it printed if he had the dough. It’s easier now, for many reasons.
I don’t see the “right to publish” as the issue here. It’s the distribution system self-publishing authors crave.
✱ Is Amazon a monopoly?
That distribution-system envy leads me to this article from venture capitalist Fred Wilson. In his post “Platform Monopolies,” Wilson says,
[There’s] a very important question we have all been dancing around but will increasingly be dealing with. … The Internet, at its core, is a marketplace that, over time, removes the need for the middleman. That is very good news for the talent that has been giving up a fairly large part of its value to all of the toll takers in between them and their end customers. …
But there is another aspect to the Internet that is not so comforting. And that is that the Internet is a network and the dominant platforms enjoy network effects that, over time, lead to dominant monopolies … [and] Amazon is increasingly looking like a monopoly in publishing. … When a platform like Amazon emerges as the dominant monopoly in publishing, who will keep them honest? When every author has left the publishing house system and has gone direct with Amazon, what does that world look like?
The comments here are just as interesting as the post. Definitely worth reading.
This question about monopoly, is, of course, the thing that concerns me. “Books had a central role in getting Amazon started, but have now declined to very likely less than 10 percent of their revenue and far less of their operating margin,” says Mike Shatzkin in the next post we’ll discuss. “Books are strategic for Amazon, but not commercially fundamental.” And Amazon is not in the business of developing authors.
✱ Got an MBA?
I don’t think publishing consultant Mike Shatzkin does, but man, does he know the book biz. In his most recent post, he deconstructs a Harvard Business School review article, giving advice to another industry, to see if there’s any advice applicable for publishers in their struggle with Amazon. The four suggestions were—
1. Exploit the platform’s need to be comprehensive.
2. Identify and discredit discrimination.
3. Create an alternate platform.
4. Deal more directly.
—and Shatzkin addresses each in terms of the publishing industry. Here’s part of his discussion about the second point:
How about this scenario?
Amazon is well on its way if not already past the point where they sell more than half of the books Americans buy (combining print and digital). Book consumers are highly influenced by the suggestions made and choices surfaced by their bookseller, whether physical or virtual. That is: the process of buying books is inextricably linked to the process of discovering books. So Amazon is getting a stranglehold on recommendations which for many consumers also means a stranglehold on marketing and promotion.
The “damage” to society that results from results being gamed in fiction is probably minimal, and restricted to Amazon promoting either its own published titles, its favorite self-published authors, and books from other publishers that have paid to play. But, with non-fiction, the consequences could be much more severe and of real public interest.
Imagine a persuasive book arguing that the government should sharply increase the minimum wage and let’s also imagine that Amazon corporately doesn’t like that idea. Is it really okay if they suppress the awareness of that book from half or more of the book-buying public?
It’s not hard for me to imagine this scenario at all. This article is long, but if you are interested in the book business at all, I recommend it to you. In fact, I recommend you subscribe. 🙂
* Thomas Mann said that, in his novel The Magic Mountain (1924).
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”