A. Victoria Mixon, Editor
Editing    Lab    Video    Book Clubs    Advice Column    About    Contact    Copyright

Sponsor

Editorial Department

Client Testimonials


How to Choose an Independent Editor


What You Should Know About Publishing


#editingchat 2011


Guest Posts



Interviewed by



Interviews



Mentions in the News

  • Swinging between Amazon and Apple with the ebook publishers

    You’ve got to give Jeff Bezos credit for cojones, if not business savvy. The guy still hasn’t learned to stay off the trapeze without a net.

    Motoko Rich of the NY Times and Christina Warren of Mashable both report this week that Amazon is back to swinging wildly from the highwire with a club, demanding a three-year contract from publishers and a guarantee no other bookseller gets better prices. For “other bookseller” you can, of course, read “Apple.” And Bezos isn’t asking nicely—he’s on the offensive.

    Well, Apple has the same sentiments about pricing. Nobody wants to be underbid.

    But Bezos appears oblivious to the bad fall he took only a few months ago pulling a high-profile stunt like this. Has he forgotten. . .um, he LOST?

    And whether or not Amazon and Apple get the Mexican Standoff they want, guaranteeing neither wins the pricing game, that time-lock contract is one spangly costume blowing in the wind. A three-year lockdown? In this technological climate? Is Bezos joking?

    Even in Silicon Valley, they don’t know where they’re going to be in three years. There’s Super-Top-Secret Classified stuff going on everywhere, NDAs popping buttons in all directions, deadly competition for marketshare with very real, very heavy millions of dollars hanging in the balance. Lock into three years of emerging technology with one company? I wouldn’t sign a that kind of contract locking me into a high-paying job.

    Steve Jobs has five of the six big publishers onboard with him—Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin—and he’ll have Random House before he’s done. They’ve got the money, he’s got the time. He’s a wheeler-dealer. That’s what he does.

    It’s not about bullying, Jeff. It’s about making someone an offer they can’t refuse. (Although it’d be nice if someone could teach Steve to pull his legs in and stop blocking the sidewalk in front of Palo Alto cafes, where he likes to do business on his cell phone.)

    BUT. There is the possibility Bezos will succeed in splitting the market into Big Pubbers and Small Pubbers if he can offer small publishers deals Jobs isn’t interested in offering. Bezos is already courting the small pubs/self-pubs people. And, I have to say, that would be a fascinating development, reconfiguring Amazon’s rather tarnished persona as the “indie friend.” (Writers are indies, too, and they don’t necessarily appreciate seeing their already laughably-minimal profits chiseled even further just to promote Bezos’ stock.)

    But are there enough nickels and dimes out there to balance the Ben Franklins? (See this article about The Long Tail by Chris Anderson in Wired in 2004—oddly retro for only five and a half years ago.)

    And what about the reputation of a lot of what’s being self-published right now? Would Amazon come out looking like the champion of mom-&-pop businesses against the big box stores? Or just a franchise of cheap dimestore head shops?

    4 Comments

4 Responses to “Swinging between Amazon and Apple with the ebook publishers”

  1. Kathryn said on March 20th, 2010 at 5:34 am

    My tenth grade son has a friend who has made twenty thousand a year for the past two years creating flash games which sell for a buck a piece. It’s shocking because these games are very simple when compared to major platform games. But obviously, there’s a market for them.

    Convenience (availability) matters to some people, even at the expense of quality. An indie friendly Amazon would be a very smart move for Amazon because those nickels and dimes do add up

    I don’t know if all these advances are making it any easier for writers though. It isn’t enough to just write, they also need to understand publishing.

    K

  2. Victoria said on March 21st, 2010 at 12:09 pm

    This is all publishing business, Kathryn, not writing craft at all. It’s a messy situation, because writers are constantly exhorted these days to understand publishing so they can do all their own marketing—now that traditional publishers have soiled their nests so badly they don’t have the money for it—which means writers don’t have the time or brainpower to learn about writing itself. It’s going from bad to worse, and there’ll be a point in the not-too-distant future when the lines cross and you’ll no longer be able to distinguish between crap and quality by whether it’s been traditionally- or self-published. When only marketers get published, the only thing to read will be books by marketers.

    As far as the kid with forty grand, can I have his phone number? I know a 12-year-old whose parents could use a leg up.

  3. Kathryn said on March 22nd, 2010 at 9:25 am

    Tell me about it. The kid’s name is Chris. He started a Flash Club at school. I told Erik, “Whatever you do, do not miss a single meeting!” Coincidentally, Chris is going back to homeschooling next year so he can devote more time to his budding empire! I think I should hire him to make a flash game out of my book! How’s that for marketing? Get the video game first, then finish the novel!

    K

  4. Victoria said on March 22nd, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    That’s not a bad idea, Kathryn. If the games are marketed to kids, you’re pipelining Mirren right into their living rooms.

    When I interviewed teachers 14 years ago for my first book, CHILDREN & THE INTERNET, one made the point that she was using the Internet in the classroom to introduce her kids to literature. She said they’d see the book online and go straight to the library to check it out.

"Opinionated, rumbunctious, sharp and always entertaining."
—Roz Morris, Nail Your Novel

"A gift to writers. . .an indispensible resource. . .Highly recommended."
—Larry Brooks, Story Engineering


"The freshest and most relevant advice you’ll find."
—Helen Gallagher
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Buy it. I recommend it."
—Dave Kuzminski
Preditors & Editors

Clients’ Successes

Scott Warrender
Short story author Scott Warrender is a Mentoring Program client. I have done full Copy, Line, & Developmental Editing on a number of short stories for him, the first of which was his poignant fictional memoir of Africa, ''The Boy With the Newsprint Kite,'' now published in the Foundling Review.

Clients’ Books


Bhaichand Patel is the author of two nonfiction books: Chasing the Good Life (Penguin Books India, October, 2006), and Happy Hours (Penguin Books India, October, 2009). I edited Patel's debut novel, When the Streets Were Cold and Dark.

I've edited a number of nonfiction essays for my friend Lucia Orth. (Many years ago, my contribution to Baby Jesus Pawn Shop was simply a peer critique and participation in a standing ovation.)

The poet Chris Ryan is the author of The Bible of Animal Feet (Farfalla Press, 2007). He has recent stories in Pank, Anemone Sidecar, and A Cappella Zoo. I edited Ryan's novel The Ishmael Blade and worked with him on his debut novel Heliophobia and WIP Pogue.