Remember when everyone hated Amazon? You don’t have to think back that far because it’s happening right now. All of the seemingly out-of-the blue backlash against Amazon has been flooding the publishing news circuit this week. Barnes and Noble’s recent decision to not sell Amazon books in their stores (they will still sell online content) was a catalyzing move causing many other bigwig and independent booksellers to follow suit. The logic behind the decision is that Amazon has limited the availability of content for readers and also has steered towards exclusivity with publisher and authors, esentially making a VERY unfair market for selling books and attempting to completely dominate other publishers and outlets. What everyone is moaning and groaning about is that they do not feel that in the (near?) future publishers should not be forced to comply with Amazon in distributing their content. The vice-president of Indigo Books even stated that Amazon does not have the long term interest of the reading public nor the publishing industry in mind.
Just a few years ago Amazon revolutionized the way the public reads when they launched their Kindle tablet, increasing the sales and popularity of e-books. (Side note – one thing I learned interning today is that Kindle was NOT the first e-Reader. The first official e-Reader was distributed by Sony…yet when it was launched it fell flat on his face. Seriously, who screwed that one up?) Point being, Amazon’s digital movement was embraced by most readers and engaged a lot of publishing professionals when it was released, yet now that they are moving towards publishing paper and hard backs everyone is up in arms.
Is this really fair? I agree with most when they say that Amazon opening physical store locations throughout the country would most likely fall flat on its face, but would it actually monopolize the book selling industry? Certainly one can’t argue that Amazon DOES limit content to their audiences and encourages complete exclusivity with some of their clients. But Apple does the same thing…try playing your iTunes music on any device other than an iPod. (yeah, it doesn’t work). This is just the nature of business, and in my opinion due to the increase of digital media and online content the business of publishing has become a bit of a melee. It’s fair to want to protect your assets and your business by rejecting collaborative efforts with a potential competitor, but is it fair to be this vitriolic in the press? Amazon had a great idea with the Kindle and e-books and it’s natural to want to expand on that idea and include audiences that might not have jumped on the tablet bandwagon. The objective of business is to continue to generate revenue and a wider audience, and Amazon is doing just that.
It’s important, especially in today’s world, to be a conscientious consumer. If people are willing to research and engage in political discussion when electing a President or Senator, they should be just as willing to come up with their own opinion of how and from where they are purchasing. I think a lot of the book sellers, especially the smaller independent ones, played a little bit of follow the leader when B&N made their public decision without really thinking in-depth about the choice.
Time will tell how all of these decisions will effect the market of book selling and from where people are likely to get their books…but in the mean time keep posted and and do a little digging around the Internet before you shake your finger at Amazon.
P.S. The one laughing all the way to the bank in this episode is not necessarily Amazon – while all of this mudslinging was going on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt signed to be the first distributor of content outside of Amazon.com…a potentially very profitable move. Will it spark a different game of follow the leader?
Tags: Amazon Books, Barnes and Noble, e-books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sony