Because this is what monopolies do
July 10, 2013 8:40 AM   Subscribe

Now that Amazon has come to completely dominate the book market, it has started raising prices.
posted by mightygodking (29 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: This feels a little like outrage-bait from an interested party; maybe there's a better post to be made about Amazon's pricing practices that isn't so much just one link to a blog by a however-justifiably-annoyed publishing house's digital media guy? -- cortex



 
Gosh, who could have predicted this? It's not like this sort of thing has happened before!
posted by entropicamericana at 8:42 AM on July 10, 2013


Without feeling the need to offer any explanation as to why it's raising prices on small press titles that don't sell many copies to begin with, it should be emphasized.
posted by mediareport at 8:42 AM on July 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


This part is particularly hilarious:

Amazon has, of course, not only denied that it’s raising prices, but suggested that it’s continuing to lower them, despite evidence that suggests otherwise. Streitfield spoke to Sarah Gelman who said, “We’re actually lowering prices. We pay for these price decreases with relentless focus on improving our execution—and this commitment to low prices is one of the reasons our print books business continues to grow.” As my colleague Dustin Kurtz tweeted over the weekend, “Sorry, but this quote from an Amazon rep in the Streitfeld article is the textual equivalent of a pod person screech.”
posted by mediareport at 8:46 AM on July 10, 2013




“It sends a confusing message that good books are worth less, and because it encourages buying based on something other than the quality of the book. It’s just an unhealthy business if people are buying a thing mostly because of its price, not its quality. That’s how you sell widgets, not books.”

Books have been discounted since time immemorial. Amazon has a lot of questionable business practices, but I don't see anything unethical with the practice of discounting itself.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:53 AM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Amazon snuck into my house and hid my copy of The Great Gatsby so that I had to purchase an e-book version of it in order to read it immediately. Even when prices appear to be lowering, consumers end up paying more when their right of first sale is eroded by corporate home invasion.

But the mainstream media ignores my story because the book in question wasn't 1984.
posted by Phssthpok at 8:56 AM on July 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


Or at least, that’s what a New York Times report by David Streitfeld speculates.

Hmm.

Noting that Amazon raised the price of Melville House’s Cotton Tenants by almost $4.00 after it fell from Amazon’s bestseller list

Hmm.

I am not seeing a lot of anything here.
posted by Artw at 8:57 AM on July 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm confused. Discounting is bad because it reduces perceived value, and raising prices is bad because it's a monopoly? I get the objections to Amazon's power due to its near-monopoly status, but I'm not sure what the actual bad behavior is here beyond "being very large."
posted by Tomorrowful at 8:58 AM on July 10, 2013 [4 favorites]


The crux of it, I think, is in that last blockquote:
“Discounting, and especially inconsistent or shifting discounting, really messes with a publisher’s ability to price a book fairly and accurately to its cost … You have to consider the fact that whatever price you put on the cover, Amazon is going to reduce it by as much as half — unless they don’t — or they may, but only for a while. But in short they’re going to make your book look like a thing with a cost lower than the one you placed on it.

“So do you raise the price, knowing they’re going to lower it, so that the price will then appear closer to what you need it to be? But if you do that then you’re screwing the more honest retailers who can’t discount. And we’ve gotten a long way from recognition of the fact that publishers have costs in making books, and that should have something to do with the price.”
I get the feeling that while Amazon created the problem with the unpredictable discounting, the actual meat of the problem is that publishers are raising their prices to compensate, and brick-and-mortar places have been stubbornly sticking to the (hello, price fixing!) number on the book jackets. It's hardly Amazon's fault that 50% off $45 is more than 50% off $30.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:59 AM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


If only there were a way to circumvent this situation....

That last tag is suitable for my mindset, although I do feel bad for authors that are caught between a rock and a hard place here. Since most of the authors I enjoy though are dead and buried and the ones that are alive both have already taken in a decent amount of my money and can wipe away their tears with hundred dollar bills if they so choose.

And I've been going to ye olde local library more. Such a conundrum seeing those still around these days. Honestly, their continued existence in the here and now is one of the great riddles of society. It's pretty much the only place where I'm happy to pay fees if I accumulate them and, more often than not, if I can't pay my fees (usually because I forgot cash/change) they're just as happy to waive or forgive them! Madness! So I donate later. Mind boggling all that...

So yea, it sucks to have to take a bit of a low road to avoid being a part of Amazon's we-all-saw-it-coming actions but that's where I am anyway.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:59 AM on July 10, 2013


I think the gist of the article is "We got nothing, but Amazon is bad, okay?".

The timing is kind of interesting also.
posted by Artw at 9:00 AM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


Just buy the shit used.
posted by nathancaswell at 9:00 AM on July 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


I am reading a copy of Clive Barker's In The Flesh that I picked up at my local Goodwill for $1. Please don't tell me Goodwill is horrible, too.
posted by Mister_A at 9:02 AM on July 10, 2013 [3 favorites]


Gosh, who could have predicted this? It's not like this sort of thing has happened before!

Dunno, but I certainly could have predict this comment, offhand wikipedia link included.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:02 AM on July 10, 2013


Huh. Might actually be 1st US edition. Also interesting - the Library of Congress bit lists the author as "Parker, Clive."
posted by Mister_A at 9:05 AM on July 10, 2013


You know, I don't like monopolies, but when I clicked on the link within the link to the NY Times story, I saw the first book mentioned was "Born to Lose." I did a Google search and in under 1 minute found 15 retailers selling the book at various prices, almost all of them higher than the price on Amazon.

Something here is just not ringing true.
posted by Muddler at 9:07 AM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


So yea, it sucks to have to take a bit of a low road to avoid being a part of Amazon's we-all-saw-it-coming actions but that's where I am anyway.

If going to your local library counts as the low road here, then we're all screwed.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:07 AM on July 10, 2013 [4 favorites]


Sys Rq: "I get the feeling that while Amazon created the problem with the unpredictable discounting, the actual meat of the problem is that publishers are raising their prices to compensate, and brick-and-mortar places have been stubbornly sticking to the (hello, price fixing!) number on the book jackets. It's hardly Amazon's fault that 50% off $45 is more than 50% off $30."

I'm also not seeing how Amazon is being "dishonest" by discounting books more deeply than brick and mortar retailers can.

Apple and Amazon have different financial priorities than publishers. They also aren't beholden to authors, which should allow them additional flexibility.
posted by zarq at 9:08 AM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


If going to your local library counts as the low road here, then we're all screwed.

I do other things. Despicable things. *trots back to e-reader*
posted by RolandOfEld at 9:09 AM on July 10, 2013


A few years ago, here in the UK, the Post Office switched from a system where the charge on a letter was determined by that letter's weight alone, to one which took both the weight and the envelope's size into account.

A Post Office spokesman was interviewed on a radio news programme about this, and said in reply to one question that many customers would find the new system simpler than the old one. The interviewer pounced, pointing out that it is fundamentally impossible for a system requiring both weight and size measurements to be simpler than one which used weight alone. Switching from one measurement to two might have many other merits, he conceded, but greater simplicity? No.

The Post Office guy repeated his claim in exactly the same words and continued to do so every time he was challenged about it. He never managed to come up with any reasoning to support this assertion - because, after all, what reasoning could there have been? - but just repeated the words his PR department had drilled in. There was a certain sadistic pleasure in listening to the interviewer kick him around, but this was outweighed by depression at the sheer degree of cognitive dissonance he'd willingly swallowed in his corporate training.

"A pod person's screech" is right.
posted by Paul Slade at 9:10 AM on July 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


The article itself states that the evidence that Amazon is raising prices is anecdotal and fragmentary. I gotta go with the people that think the linked article is more or less "Amazon sucks amirite?".
posted by Justinian at 9:13 AM on July 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


The price/value of books actually began its descent with the rise in online sales of used print editions in the early 00's. Publishers (and smaller book retailers, including those that specialize in used books) have been complaining about "penny book sellers," who generally charge nothing for the book and a flat rate for shipping, on Amazon for years before the release of the Kindle. Those sellers utilize Amazon as a selling platform, sort of like eBay, and Amazon surfaces offers from them in a variety of ways.

Just as video game publishers are working hard to prevent the sale of used games, book publishers would almost certainly love to eliminate all used book sales with single-use licenses for digital content.

The Kindle, and ebooks in general, have also created a new publishing platform that has a couple of interesting case studies around self-published works that end up being quite successful. I don't like the platform lock-in, DRM, content licensing, or any of the other vestigial business model crap that is bolted on to make publishers feel more secure in the digital age, but it is my hope that most of that stuff fades away over time.

I can't say I know much about the actual business of publishing, but it seems to me that the situation is a hell of a lot more complex than TFA makes it out to be, particularly in light of the ruling about Apple/Publisher price fixing this morning.
posted by drklahn at 9:15 AM on July 10, 2013


The article itself states that the evidence that Amazon is raising prices is anecdotal and fragmentary.

Wouldn't that be because Amazon not only doesn't offer small-press publishers an explanation for why it's suddenly raising the prices on their books, but also has its press people deny they're raising prices at all?
posted by mediareport at 9:15 AM on July 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Amazon has a large market share, but certainly not a monopoly - unless you bought a kindle. I can order books from Indigo-Chapters, shop at brick & mortar stores of all types, buy ebooks from Kobo, Google or anyone else willing to sell epubs to me (I've bought directly from publishers), and my closest source of books is a lovely local library 900m from my house - not counting their growing ebook collection.

Now, I'm in Canada, but I know a lot of these options were also available when I lived in the US, such as ordering from Powells (good prices, good delivery).

I think the last thing I bought from Amazon was a rice cooker, and that was 5 years ago.
posted by jb at 9:18 AM on July 10, 2013


Wouldn't that be because Amazon not only doesn't offer small-press publishers an explanation for why it's suddenly raising the prices on their books, but also has its press people deny they're raising prices at all?
It could be, but that isn't actually evidence that there is a systemic price increase going on. The thing about a company line is that it stays exactly the same regardless of what the underlying reality actually is.

You'd need a broad survey of the site, which the article admits hasn't happened because it would be difficult and time-consuming. But without one, all you have is anecdata.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:21 AM on July 10, 2013


Guess who I've never bought a book from, print or otherwise? I even have their stupid Kindle Fire. Fuck them and the train they rode in on. Between this kind of corporate malfeasance and governments trying to make it even more difficult to exist freely it would appear that those who are the current power holders/brokers are actively trying to foment a revolt.
posted by IvoShandor at 9:21 AM on July 10, 2013


Man, I really wanted this to be about EC2 pricing. People still buy books? On paper?
posted by pwnguin at 9:22 AM on July 10, 2013


Just buy the shit used.

Works pretty well right now. But e-book ascendancy means print runs are going to get smaller and smaller and for an increasing number of books disappear altogether. (And, yes, there is going to be e-book ascendancy, no matter how much anyone asserts that vinyl sounds better.)
posted by Zed at 9:22 AM on July 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


While I have instinctual sympathies with the article's POV, I'm troubled by the generalized and anecdotal nature of its forcefully-worded claims that Amazon is now measurably raising prices. That aspect of the piece to me makes it a weak entry in an otherwise worthwhile argument. Such a lack of specifics coupled with grand claims tend to set off my "outrage-filter link-bait" alarm for online article quality ("This Thing You Love - It's Going to Turn On You ANY DAY NOW, Citizens - READ HERE NOW BEFORE ITS TOO LATE").

I mean, the big example they use (Agee's Cotton Tenants from Melville House) currently costs the same at Amazon and on the publisher's web site. Which is what one would, by default, expect. If Amazon sold it for a few dollars less when it was a best seller for them, well, that's what indy bookstores (not to mention bigbox ones) have often done with best sellers as well (or at least most of the ones I have known over the decades). I wonder if Melville House thinks indy stores that have a 20% off Bestseller Table are also a threat to his very survival and if he tries to game his cover price with that in mind as well?

Surely for something as large and studies and discussed as Amazon there are actual sales and discount statistics that could be looked at?

As far as absolute monopolization goes, for small press books, I personally find it a trivial matter to buy directly from most small press publishers over the web, and I'm lucky enough to live in a town that still has used book stores. But if suburbanites / "non-book-people" tend just to go directly to Amazon because they can't be bothered with googling or paypal and besides they only want a top-ten bestseller anyhow to read on vacation, I'm not sure how that's really all that different from casual-reading people getting their books from drug store spinner racks or the WaldenBooks at the mall instead of indy stores, back in the hallowed pre-Amazon days of old (which I remember well; GOMLYDK, etc).

It's funny - I distinctly remember the first time someone told me about this cool new World Wide Web page Amazon.com that sold books for a discount, and thinking, "'Amazon,' like the rain forest? That's a weird name for a book site. Are you sure that's what they do?" It was a while before I actually investigated it, thinking it was some stupid, to-be-short-lived thing. Eh, I guess maybe it's not really so funny after all.
posted by aught at 9:23 AM on July 10, 2013


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