Steven Orlowski's Blog: Steve O's "So What?" Blog - Posts Tagged "book-publishing"

The headline of my post today is in quotations because it is the exact headline from a New York Times article published yesterday which bemoans the fact that Amazon.com is "cutting back its deals for scholarly and small-press books".

I may be misreading this, but it seems the authors and publishers feel slighted by Amazon for not discounting the books enough. Maybe the publishers need to reconsider their pricing strategy, for isn't Amazon.com discounting the price set by the publisher?

And let's be clear, Amazon.com owes no one - publisher, author or reader - anything. As a matter of fact we the consumers, writers and publishers of books, have benefited from Amazon.com's willingness to lose money on many of the books it sold in order for it to grow its business and eliminate the competition.

And while I too miss having a local bookstore to visit and buy books I have also wholeheartedly embraced the Amazon.com experience.

It's been years since I bought a new release in a book store. I still go to the one remaining chain bookstore nearby, look at the full-priced book to see if I think I'll like it, then order it on my Amazon.com app.

But everybody should have expected this change in business strategy. We knew the company would eventually want or need to make money on all of the books it sold, including "scholarly" and "small press" titles with presumably limited quantities of buyers.

So who knows, maybe this will spark the inventiveness of the next Jeff Bezos who will figure out a way to make money while meeting the discounting demands of publishers, authors and readers.

But in the meantime this is another reason to embrace the burgeoning indie author movement, which of course means more eBooks sold by, uh, Amazon.com.

At least on Kindle and other e-publishing platforms the authors can price the book as low as they want to, even free, until of course Amazon.com decides to change that policy...which will of course drive another wave of change and innovation.

Publishers and authors (and readers) cannot expect Amazon.com or any other company to lose money on any aspect of its business forever. Like it or not, all businesses are created for one reason and one reason only - profit.

Businesses die without profits. And that goes for every business out there, even those that claim benevolent motivations. No profit = no business. And no business ever gets to the point where it isn't striving for more profit.

I do think however that Amazon will be forced to reconsider some of the new, higher pricing. I've noticed that the pre-release books of some of the authors I regularly buy are much higher today than in the past...and I have stopped ordering those books.

I am a patient man. I'll wait until the price comes down - or for the paperback to be released next year - or until I can borrow the book at my library - for free on my Kindle.

There is a balance that needs to be struck - will be struck - but it will take time. Prices have been wonderfully low for almost two decades at Amazon.com - and the giant has successfully slayed all of its would be killers.

I think we'll have to accept the recent pricing changes temporarily and keep on the lookout for the next bigger, better thing.