“The central problem is Amazon’s enormous dominance of the entire book publishing industry,”
I am the publisher; Amazon is the retail outlet. The “publishers,” consisting of thousands of small fry just like me, exist in the most democratizing store front in the history of the world, Amazon’s website. Legally, one could argue that Amazon is a consignment store. “Here is a place to sell your goods,” says Amazon. “Bring them into our store and we will collect the money from the sale and keep a percent for rent and other overhead.”
How Amazon is strikingly different from Standard OIl and AT&T is that Amazon has no ownership interest in even one item out of the millions it sells. It doesn’t own oil lands, leaseholds, drilling platforms, tanker ships, or oil, the commodity itself. Neither does it own communication products put into the stream of commerce for resale. It uses communication products just like it uses carbon fuels, but it doesn’t own those things and has no competitive footprint in the market of such items.
Neither does Amazon have a competitive footprint in the market of books in the sense of ownership interest in the books it sells or the tires it sells or the garden hose it sells or the bracelets it sells–it’s simply a provisioner of a marketplace. You would never accuse a mall of antitrust; you would never accuse a website of antitrust. Offering other people’s products for sale in your mall just doesn’t fit inside the unfair competitive advantage by price-fixing and monopolistic practices the antitrust laws contemplate.
Finally, Amazon’s business practices in no way restrain trade. Every whiner and bitcher out there can go over to Go Daddy, buy a URL for $2.99 and set up a website for $9.99 a month and compete with Amazon 100% restraint free. There is no monopolistic practice that prevents that.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Late on Posts - Busy With New Book
The new book is Michael Gresham. Michael is 55, Catholic and prays, divorced, spends hours cleaning up after a brother who refuses to take his meds, negotiates with ex-wife who needs money to buy hormones and get pregnant, and defends a client with diminished capacity who is accused of killing the wife of a federal judge. This is enough to get anyone rolling down the the thriller tracks.
The idea for the book--it will develop into a series--is the constituency of my readership. The great majority of my readers will relate to Michael's age and marital status because so many fall within the same general characteristics. Is this a ploy? You're damn right it is. I want to read about people I can relate to and I bet you do, too.
Michael Gresham is a legal thriller. There's enough going on between the covers to keep you up late, reading when you should be sleeping and getting ready for tomorrow's mini-drama down at the office, or store, or station, or wherever you earn your keep. The book is written in the first person--your author's notion of how Michael Gresham sounds when he speaks. His words, his dialect, his depth of appraisal of the world around him, his reaction to events: you will come away knowing who he is, I promise you.
Now the question is, do I let one of Amazon's imprints publish the book or do I self-publish? On the one hand, Amazon has access to all the readers any writer could ever want. On the other hand, I do love my freedom and independence and ability to turn on a dime if I decide to change this or that about my work or manipulate the book's price or cover or the jillion other little things authors like to fiddle with. There's always that. So I'm going to let my beta reader Maia decide what I do with the book. She won't know she's making this decision: but when I see her reaction I'll know exactly where to place it for adoption. Another wounded child on its way home.
And that, my friends, is how I view the publication of one of my books.
The idea for the book--it will develop into a series--is the constituency of my readership. The great majority of my readers will relate to Michael's age and marital status because so many fall within the same general characteristics. Is this a ploy? You're damn right it is. I want to read about people I can relate to and I bet you do, too.
Michael Gresham is a legal thriller. There's enough going on between the covers to keep you up late, reading when you should be sleeping and getting ready for tomorrow's mini-drama down at the office, or store, or station, or wherever you earn your keep. The book is written in the first person--your author's notion of how Michael Gresham sounds when he speaks. His words, his dialect, his depth of appraisal of the world around him, his reaction to events: you will come away knowing who he is, I promise you.
Now the question is, do I let one of Amazon's imprints publish the book or do I self-publish? On the one hand, Amazon has access to all the readers any writer could ever want. On the other hand, I do love my freedom and independence and ability to turn on a dime if I decide to change this or that about my work or manipulate the book's price or cover or the jillion other little things authors like to fiddle with. There's always that. So I'm going to let my beta reader Maia decide what I do with the book. She won't know she's making this decision: but when I see her reaction I'll know exactly where to place it for adoption. Another wounded child on its way home.
And that, my friends, is how I view the publication of one of my books.
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