Five years after Amazon secretly asked regulators to investigate leading publishers - a case that ended up reinforcing the e-commerce company's clout - groups representing thousands of authors, agents and independent booksellers are asking the United States Department of Justice to examine Amazon for antitrust violations.
Perhaps stealing a page from Amazon, which often promotes policies that would benefit it by talking about what customers want, the groups said their concerns were more about freedom of expression and a healthy culture than about themselves.Hachette
Michael Weinstein is a member of the Publishing Executive Hall of Fame and has 35 years experience in production, manufacturing, content management and change management.
He is currently Production Director for Teachers College Press. Previously, he was Vice President, Global Content and Media Production for Cengage Learning. Prior to that he was Vice President of Production and Manufacturing for Oxford University Press, Pearson/Prentice Hall, Worth Publishers and HarperCollins.
In those capacities, he has been a leader in managing process and content for delivery in as many ways possible.
He is currently Production Director for Teachers College Press. Previously, he was Vice President, Global Content and Media Production for Cengage Learning. Prior to that he was Vice President of Production and Manufacturing for Oxford University Press, Pearson/Prentice Hall, Worth Publishers and HarperCollins.
In those capacities, he has been a leader in managing process and content for delivery in as many ways possible.
Cory Doctorow came over to Budapest at the invitation of the Center for Media, Data and Society of Central European University to speak on policing computers and other issues. In the course of a fascinating interview with me, he shared a slew of observations on a great many issues, many of which I’ll be presenting in […]
The post Cory Doctorow speaks on self-publishing, Amazon, DRM, Hachette, and a whole lot else besides appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.
The Amazon-Hachette battle is over, to what seems like relief for publishers. The conventional take on this war is that publishers are fighting for their lives in the face of Amazon's relentless drive to cut prices. First, the thinking goes, Amazon cuts the prices. Then it cuts the publishers' share. Next it cuts the publisher.
Only problem here: It doesn't look so certain now that the publisher gets cut out of the equation. Consider whether, not immediately but five or 10 years from now, the one who gets cut out is ... Amazon.
Remember that Amazon/Disney dispute that was supposed to be yet another harbinger of the doom Amazon was looking to bring down upon all its suppliers? Well, that's over. Or at least negotiated to a point Amazon was willing to reinstate preorders and such on Disney products. So much for the doom. It lasted a little under two months.
There's also this little tidbit from the same Wall Street Journal article:
"A similar dispute between Amazon and Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. in the spring lasted several weeks.
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Digital Book World is carrying the response Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch is sending to those people who write him at Amazon’s behest. Since I posted the Amazon letter in full, it seems only fair to do the same for this. Pietsch (or whoever wrote the response for him) maintains that “Hachette sets prices for our […]
The post Hachette responds to Amazon advocates’ email on pricing its e-books appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.
Nick Mamatas was kind enough to tip me off to a fascinating writeup by Dennis Johnson, co-founder of Brooklyn indie publishing stalwart Melville House, on a story that knocks another hole in Hachette’s credibility as the self-styled defender of cultural and literary values against the encroachment of Amazon. As Johnson tells it, Hachette Book Group’s […]
The post Hachette tried to toss indies out with the trash in Perseus distro deal appeared first on TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics.
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