Finance Matters

Archive for January 31st, 2010

Looks like Amazon is throwing in the towel on its fight against Macmillan.

In a statement on the Kindle Community website, Amazon says it must “capitulate” to Macmillan’s demand to charge $12-$15 for an  e-book version of a new hardcover, or bestseller.

The full statement from the Amazon Kindle team:

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See Also:

• Hey, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Books, Screw You!
• Macmillan CEO Takes Out A Full Page Ad To Explain His War With Amazon
• Book Wars: Amazon Retaliates Against Publisher Over eBook Pricing, Pulls Books From Shelves

George Packer, columnist for Mother Jones and a staff writer for The New Yorker since 2003, takes a careening look at media’s hyper pace in the New Yorker this week.

He begins with the return of The Baffler, the left-wing business and culture magazine, that rose from the print grave recently and printed again with its long articles and thoughtful essays.

But Packer wrestles with services like Twitter. He noted New York Times’ David Carr on Why Twitter Will Endure. “Twitter is crack for media addicts,” he wrote. “It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it. I’m afraid I’d end up letting my son go hungry.”

By the end of the piece, he wonders if his sources in Washington will stop taking him seriously if they knew he wasn’t as connected as many other journalists. He hides the fact that he doesn’t own a BlackBerry.

So I can hardly escape the demands of the throbbing networked intelligence, the nonstop nagging of the wired collective voice. Lately, I’ve begun to think—with real trepidation—that I’ll have to get a BlackBerry. I’m well aware that this is a perverse way to act like a political journalist and cover Washington. It’s like doing war reporting without a flak jacket or satellite phone. It’s a temporary and probably untenable compromise between the world of the work and the desire to protect my consciousness from it. Sooner or later, something will have to give. If it looks like I’m drowning, give a shout.

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See Also:

• The iPad: My Ménage A Trois With A Media Machine
• Get A Sneak Peek At Publisher Apps For The Apple iPad
• Newsday Tries To Put Positive Spin On Pathetic Online Subscriptions

From The Huffington Post:

Candy Crowley will succeed John King as anchor of CNN’s Sunday morning program, “State of the Union.”

King announced the selection of Crowley shortly before 10AM ET on-air. He will anchor a 7PM newscast on the network, a replacement for “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” which went off the air in November.

“Candy’s rare combination of shrewd insight and healthy irreverence for the games politicians play has made her one of the most honored political journalists and a cult figure among CNN viewers,” CNN/US President Jon Klein said in an announcement. “Every Sunday she’ll translate Washington-speak into plain English that every American can understand, as she has been doing better than any reporter on the beat for decades.”

Continue reading at HuffPo»

Watch the video of the announcement:

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See Also:

• CNN Partners With Vice Magazine, Sub Pop Records In Video Content Deal
• CNBC Hires Former CNN Anchor Nicole Lapin For Worldwide Exchange
• FOX NEWS Makes More Money Than CNN, MSNBC, And NBC-ABC-And-CBS News Combined

John Sargent, CEO of publisher Macmillan, has taken out a full-page ad to explain why he is insisting that Amazon raise prices on its ebooks to $15 in some cases.

So we’re going to take out a full-page post to explain to John why, on behalf of book buyers (and writers) everywhere, we’re cheering for Amazon on this one.

First, to clarify what is happening here, you are already getting your money: You are selling ebooks to Amazon at whatever price you set ($10-$15), and Amazon is turning around and selling them at a loss, sometimes for $9.99.  We’re not against your charging what you want to for your books.  We’re against your telling Amazon what it has to charge for them.

Also, we don’t want to pay $15 for ebooks, and we don’t think we should have to.  The marginal cost of an incremental ebook is pretty much zero.  So why on earth should we pay $15 for it? 

Thanks to Amazon, we can buy red-hot first-run physical books for about $15.  And now John is insisting that we pay the same amount for some bits downloaded to the Kindle?  Give us a break.

John argues that if we aren’t forced to pay $15, writers won’t write good books, the world will go to hell in a handbasket, and Macmillan will collapse. 

Let’s take those points one at a time, in reverse order.

First, if Macmillan collapses, so be it.  Someone else (Amazon?) will happily publish whatever good books Macmillan would have published.  Macmillan’s editors will find other employers, perhaps at Amazon.

Second, the world is doing just fine, thanks.  Good books will always be published.  Perhaps not in precisely the same form, but they’ll be published.  And, thanks to Amazon’s new low-cost distribution model, more of them will eventually be published than ever.  We don’t need someone like Macmillan sitting between us and good books.

Third, don’t give us that crap about how writers won’t write good books unless Amazon is forced to charge $15 for them.  If Amazon sells books for $9.99, writers will sell more copies of the books than they would if Amazon charged $15.  If the writers take advantage of Amazon’s new “70% royalty plan”, they’ll make a much bigger slug of that $10 than they do of the $15.  And if and when the publishing industry finally begins to understand the price/volume trade off and Amazon sells the same books for $4.99, the writers will sell a even more of them and do just fine (especially if the publishers’ share is squeezed).

Also, please don’t argue that, if Macmillan goes bust, books will be bad.  Publisher editors don’t really edit books anymore.  They acquire, package, and market them.  And that’s fine: Everyone’s strapped for time and money these days, and editors just don’t have the time or money to edit anymore.  (But books are still fine.  In part because many writers hire freelance editors themselves.)

Yes, if Amazon charges $9.99 for ebooks and “prints” them instantly, some writers will conclude that they don’t have to write 100,000 words and wait a year for the publishing industry’s dinosauric practices to finally get the thing into physical print…and they’ll write shorter, more timely books that will skip the whole “hardcover” process altogether.  But, again, that’s Macmillan’s problem, not ours.

Did Steve Jobs seduce you with that temporary “charge-whatever-you-want” speech?  Well, Steve has been known to seduce people from time to time.  Just imagine what will happen once Steve has put the Kindle out of business and Steve owns the ebook platform instead of Jeff Bezos.  That’s right: You’ll get held up even worse than Jeff’s holding you up today.  Just ask the music industry.  Careful what you wish for.

So, bottom line, John, take your $15 ebooks and shove them!  We’re with Amazon on this one.

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See Also:

• Macmillan CEO Takes Out A Full Page Ad To Explain His War With Amazon
• Book Wars: Amazon Retaliates Against Publisher Over eBook Pricing, Pulls Books From Shelves
• Steve Jobs Says Book Publishers Hate Amazon’s Kindle

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