Week Links is meant to be a fun feature most Sundays, a collection of interesting, amusing, or just plain weird links from my Facebook page.
This week, not so much, because this week a lot of the page was given to the disappearance of the A Night Too Dark page from Amazon.com due to the throwdown between my publisher and Amazon. Everyone in publishing knows this is an event that has just been waiting to happen, but really, did it have to happen three weeks before my book came out?
The first I heard of this was when a panicked fan emailed me via Facebook Friday morning, January 29th, wanting to know where the A Night Too Dark Amazon page went.
[If you want to know why this happened, read any or all of these posts:
Literary agent Nathan Bransford's The Kindle Missile Crisis,
Pimp My Novel's "Round One: Macmillan,"
and The Idea Log's "The wild weekend of Amazon and Macmillan."]
You want to know how I feel about this? Okay, since you asked.
I’m a full-time author. If I don’t sell books, I go down to city hall and apply for that job refiling the same index card over and over again. As a full-time author, I sell a significant number of books on Amazon, many via pre-orders by fans who want to buy the book for a discount and have it in their mailbox on the day of publication, two things at which Amazon excels.
This website you’re on right now? It has hundreds of titles of books on it, including a few I’ve written myself, and almost every title has an Amazon buy link under it. I was an early adopter of the Amazon Associate program and the Amazon Connect author program, and I think I was one of the first to RSS her website feed to her Amazon profile.
And I’m a consumer who lives in a rural area with limited shopping venues. Amazon is my Internet retailer of choice not just for books but for clothes, kitchen utensils, I think I even found a vendor for the red wrigglers in my Can o’ Worms through Amazon.
So when Amazon takes the A Night Too Dark page down without a word of warning to me or to the hundreds who had the book on pre-order…and then puts the page back up without restoring the buy button…and then puts the buy button back up without restoring the Kindle buy button, which is how things stand as I type…
You know how I feel?
Pissed. Off.
Amazon has pretty much offended me on every level, author, entrepreneur, and consumer.
I believe (riffing on Lazarus Long here) that the more ways there are to read, the more people will read. Hardcover, trade paperback, eReader, iPhone, bring it on. The more devices available for reading books, from Gutenberg to Jobs, the more books will be read.
Amazon has been using books as a loss leader to sell Kindles, but they were dreaming if they thought they were going to be able to maintain a lock on the eReader market forever, or even until next month.
Publishing, the industry in which I make my living, has taken plenty of deserved hits over the last decade for a business model that is, to put it kindly, archaic. But Macmillan is now in the painful process of trying to bring their part of the industry into the twenty-first century. That has to include the ability to set your own sale price on your own product. Macmillan isn’t in the business of selling Kindles. It’s in the business of selling A Night Too Dark.
Amazon is a general retailer. It’s in the business of selling everything.
Or it’s supposed to be.
Author’s note: This blog is RSS’d to my author page on Amazon.
14 Comments
Here’s a really well-written writeup on the Macmillan mess that I think explains pretty well how e-book users see this.
I’d be curious what you think of it.
http://www.teleread.org/2010/02/06/the-amazonmacmillan-blow-up-an-e-book-lovers-appeal-for-understanding/#more-37750
I am really sorry to hear this; it sucks.
I’m sorry also that Amazon.co.uk has your hardback as published on 1st February but asserts:
‘Not in stock; order now and we’ll deliver when available’
Amazon.co.uk doesn’t sell e-books, and did not pull Macmillan titles. It looks, however, as if they were not exactly falling over themselves in getting stock in to meet demand.
I will keep my fingers crossed for you…
First, I haven’t read any of your books, but I am friends of some great fans of yours. That is how I know who you are.
Second, I really think it is unfair that Amazon did this to you and others who make their living by the books they sell. I am glad you have spoken your mind on this particular subject.
Good luck and I hope that all this stuff with Amazon gets straightened out soon.
cant blame you for being pissed off. hope many have cancelled and reordered as i did.good luck dana, eagerly awaiting your new book
ursula
Just on general principles I buy new releases from either our local independent or the brick-and-mortar chains. This just confirms that practice for me. Still waiting for them to get the kinks worked out of the ereaders before venturing in that direction anyway.
@Patrick: That’s a long piece, I got a third of the way through it and then had to go do something else. When I get all the way down to the bottom, I’ll comment here.
Everyone else, thank you so much for your support. It’s been a fraught couple of weeks.
I’ve been irritated with Amazon ever since they pulled a couple of books off Kindle without warning. I mean, off the devices people were reading, people who have paid for their books. I own a Sony reader. This can no more happen to a Sony than it can to a CD you burn for yourself.
Anyway, I have a Barnes & Noble membership and there I will go to buy “A Night Too Dark” when it comes out next week. B & N have never, ever ripped me off.
I’ve been stalking your book on Amazon to pre-order for the Kindle - and it is killing me that it is STILL not available. When will it be available on Kindle? My vacation starts the 18th and your book is what I want to read first!!!
BTW - I love my kindle - and I buy more books now with it than I did before. In my mind I don’t care what price Amazon or your publisher wants to set - I know what I am willing to pay and if it is too much - I won’t buy it. And it does vary by author (for Kate - full price baby!). But the 9.99 crowd on Amazon is a very vocal minority - and we are often swayed by who yells the loudest.
Good luck!
I’m so sorry about this, Suzanne. I wish there was something I could do. I will forward your post to my editor and my agent, so at least you won’t go unheard.
Suzanne, my editor responds:
It’s my understanding that it’s very rare that you can “preorder” a Kindle edition. On the on-sale day, Tues the 16th, it will definitely be available. I just spot-checked several Feb, March and April books, and only the very biggest books have it available for preorder on Kindle (one I saw was Robert Parker). For everyone else it’s not possible. So just write the person back and tell them it will be available on the 16th, and to check back!
No offense to your editor - but they are wrong. Amazon has turn on the pre-order feature for lots of books - even ones where the digital “ships” after the print version. My pre-order is down to 3 at the moment - including Rite Mae Brown and Laurie King - both of whom I also love - but I would argue neither is a “huge” author - like Stephen King or Parker.
I’ll keep checking - but your publisher should be nagging Amazon to turn on the feature and get you some sales. Good luck with this book & all the rest!
i went to buy it today - not available for the kindle. hope it becomes available soon.
From Portugal…where it is neither easy nor cheap to buy books in English…
HEAR,HEAR!, DANA STABENOW! I miss Kate Shugak and will fight for her here!
I am very careful about the books I buy from Amazon.co.uk since they screwed me.
Ordered a Hardbook Laurell K Hamilton book, recieved the UK trade paperback, so complained and was told that is what I ordered. After weeks of emails got them to admit they had changed what I ordered, but they were not selling what I wanted in the UK, so tough.
Thank God, for Borders!
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