Last weekend Amazon and Macmillan Publishing got into an argument about the correct pricing for ebooks. Amazon wanted to limit the cost to $9.99 while Macmillan was pushing for $15. If I was just looking at this portion of the debate then I am firmly on Amazon’s side because as I have said before pricing ebooks at hardback prices makes no sense.
However Amazon lost all my respect and future business when it decided to throw a tantrum and removed all books from Macmillan and its subsidiaries from its listing (about 1/6th of the books in its listing) without telling anyone about it. Basically one minute the books were there and the next they were gone.
By this move instead of being gaining support for its stand for reducing costs they gained a lot of bad publicity and really pissed off a lot of authors whose books were removed from the listing without any fault of theirs. A lot of these authors posted about this on their blogs/twitter feeds/Facebook pages (I came to know about it from Mercedes Lackey’s posting on FB) and their fans are calling for a boycott of Amazon and are asking people to buy their books from other online stores instead. A lot of them have removed the Amazon affiliate links from their sites because of this.
Amazon then made a statement on Sunday that they are putting the Macmillan books back but at the time of this writing (4th Feb 2010) you still can’t purchase their books from Amazon except for used copies for which the Authors don’t get any royalties but Amazon still makes money on the sales.
When Amazon started off I did buy a couple of books from them but over a period of time I stopped because I was getting better deals at other sites. Then when I moved back to India their shipping costs made it unfeasible for me to buy anything from them.
Since I don’t buy anything from them any more, I can’t really boycott them, but if you do then do consider one of the alternatives listed below (Suggested by Mercedes Lackey):
- Firebird Arts and Music: FANTASTIC customer service. She ships anywhere. If there is a book you want but is not on the list, ask her, she can probably get it.
- Powell’s Books
- waterstones.com: A good store that UK readers might want to try
From my side I suggest the following additional stores:
- flipkart.com/: A Good store but only delivers within India.
- Barnes and Nobel: Used to be my Favorite store. Haven’t really tried to get them to ship to India but within US they are awesome.
Here are some posts that explain what is happening in a little more detail:
- http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/29/amazon-and-macmillan.html
- http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/01/30/a-quick-note-on-ebook-pricing/
- http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/all-the-many-ways-amazon-so-very-failed-the-weekend/
- http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/seriously-now-theyre-just-being-dicks
- http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html
- http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazonmacmillan-other-perspect.html
Support the authors. Don’t let amazon bully its way to the top.
– Suramya