Tag Archives: Big Six publishers

Amazon Speaks!

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Taken from the Amazon Discussion Boards just now, their word on the kerfuffle with Hachette: 

The Amazon Books team says:

(AMAZON OFFICIAL)
We are currently buying less (print) inventory and “safety stock” on titles from the publisher, Hachette, than we ordinarily do, and are no longer taking pre-orders on titles whose publication dates are in the future. Instead, customers can order new titles when their publication date arrives. For titles with no stock on hand, customers can still place an order at which time we order the inventory from Hachette — availability on those titles is dependent on how long it takes Hachette to fill the orders we place. Once the inventory arrives, we ship it to the customer promptly. These changes are related to the contract and terms between Hachette and Amazon.

At Amazon, we do business with more than 70,000 suppliers, including thousands of publishers. One of our important suppliers is Hachette, which is part of a $10 billion media conglomerate. Unfortunately, despite much work from both sides, we have been unable to reach mutually-acceptable agreement on terms. Hachette has operated in good faith and we admire the company and its executives. Nevertheless, the two companies have so far failed to find a solution. Even more unfortunate, though we remain hopeful and are working hard to come to a resolution as soon as possible, we are not optimistic that this will be resolved soon.

Negotiating with suppliers for equitable terms and making stocking and assortment decisions based on those terms is one of a bookseller’s, or any retailer’s, most important jobs. Suppliers get to decide the terms under which they are willing to sell to a retailer. It’s reciprocally the right of a retailer to determine whether the terms on offer are acceptable and to stock items accordingly. A retailer can feature a supplier’s items in its advertising and promotional circulars, “stack it high” in the front of the store, keep small quantities on hand in the back aisle, or not carry the item at all, and bookstores and other retailers do these every day. When we negotiate with suppliers, we are doing so on behalf of customers. Negotiating for acceptable terms is an essential business practice that is critical to keeping service and value high for customers in the medium and long term.

A word about proportion: this business interruption affects a small percentage of Amazon’s demand-weighted units. If you order 1,000 items from Amazon, 989 will be unaffected by this interruption. If you do need one of the affected titles quickly, we regret the inconvenience and encourage you to purchase a new or used version from one of our third-party sellers or from one of our competitors.

We also take seriously the impact it has when, however infrequently, such a business interruption affects authors. We’ve offered to Hachette to fund 50% of an author pool – to be allocated by Hachette – to mitigate the impact of this dispute on author royalties, if Hachette funds the other 50%. We did this with the publisher Macmillan some years ago. We hope Hachette takes us up on it.

This topic has generated a variety of coverage, presumably in part because the negotiation is with a book publisher instead of a supplier of a different type of product. Some of the coverage has expressed a relatively narrow point of view. Here is one post that offers a wider perspective.

http://www.thecockeyedpessimist.blogspot.com/2014/05/whos-afraid-of-amazoncom.html

Thank you.

Sooo, a little more depth to counter the newspaper articles which seem almost uniformly pro-publisher / anti-distributor.  And DISCLAIMER, Amazon has been a great outlet for those who have chosen the Indie-published route when folks at the Big Six (Five?) publishers — like Hachette — wouldn’t give ’em a chance, that is, wouldn’t take a chance on books like A Sword Into Darkness  or REMO that have sold well and have been well-received.  I’d love to be in with the Big Guys, instead of sipping Kool-Aid at the kids’ table, but since I am there, it is some mighty fine Kool-Aid and I’m proud to thank my host.
 
Thoughts?
 

All “Tor”n Up

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The Wife has now experienced the momentary confusion of the thin, self-addressed, stamped envelope.

A new SASE arrived yesterday with the anticipated-but-not-desired rejection form letter, this time from TOR/FORGE, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. She apologized when she handed me the thin envelope, already torn open. She had no idea why I’d be mailing myself a letter and had ripped it open without remembering the submissions, much like I had last time with the rejection from DAW. It was fine though. Like last time, I figured publishing contracts would probably take up more than a page.

That brings the current rejection/acceptance tally to 2 against (TOR/FORGE and DAW (or is that 3 against?)), and 0 for, with Baen Books/Simon & Schuster (on hold for well over a year), Ace/Penguin, and Pyr/Prometheus still yet to report out of the “Big Six” publishers I submitted to. I don’t recall if I mentioned it before, but Random House (Bantam, Del Rey, Ballantine, and Spectra), Harper Collins (Eos/Prism, Voyager), and Hachette (Orbit) don’t accept unsolicited submissions without a literary agent — and a literary agent is pretty much just as hard to get without a contract in hand as a book publisher.

Ah well. At least I won’t be getting any more thin SASEs. All my remaining submissions were electronic. The time is ticking for the obligatory rejection form e-mails, however.

Sorry. I hate to be a downer. If any of the remaining three say “yes”, it’ll be amazing, but if all say no, it won’t stop A Sword Into Darkness. Assuming that happens, I’ll either re-submit to smaller publishers, finally get a pickup from a literary agent, or I’ll just publish it myself on Amazon/Apple/Barnes&Noble and hope it picks up on its own. And separate from all that, I still have a number of projects in the works.

As Dory said, just keep swimming!

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