I work for the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts. An organization that promotes the value of quality writing in many forms and genres.
There was an interesting discussion in this weeks staff meeting about online bookstores, thus I found the following articles informative on the topic.
Amazon’s tactics in Hachette spat bring out writers’ ire on Twitter on Page A7 of Saturday, May 10, 2014 issue of Seattle Times
( http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/SeattleTimes/LandingPage/LandingPage.aspx?href=U1RDRC8yMDE0LzA1LzEw&pageno=Nw..&entity=QXIwMDcwMQ..&view=ZW50aXR5 )
The Slate… version is somewhat more informative but not any less biased toward the publishers perspective.
( http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/05/09/amazon_is_delaying_shipping_on_hachette_books_here_s_why_it_can_push_publishers.html )
There must be an Amazon response but I haven’t found it yet. Their side of the story seems to be whatever is best for the book buyer. I wonder if it is a little more insidious than this though.
I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that Amazon (and other electronic distribution services like them) likely see the end of times for the traditional book publisher middleman role and feel it their duty to expedite the process.
There may always be a market, however dwindling, for printed-on-paper books, but this might be more efficiently performed as some sort of on-demand side-line of the overall e-delivery business. The traditional “publisher” may still add value to a writers product in promotion, fronting cash for emerging authors, etc but it might not be in forest management.
I’m pretty fatalistic or optimistic, depending on your perspective, on the technology vs legacy business models. I expect to be downloading my future publication purchases by trans-cranial knowledge injection while sleeping (if sleep is even necessary by then), so I have no delusions on the outcome of the current skirmish.
Its interesting to watch from the sidelines though.
– jgp
Apparently, this iteration of the Amazon vs the world conflict has been amicably resolved. http://goo.gl/fHv5Et