Example: Go to bn.com and try to email someone in the authors’ service department. Oh, that’s right, you can’t. There isn’t one. So if someone else’s bio is showing up on ALL your titles’ sales pages at bn.com, there is no one to whom you can point this out.

I have emailed four times and received absolutely no response at all. Not even an auto-response saying that they’ve received my email.

You can’t run a business this way in 2012, folks.

I wouldn’t buy a Nook, thank you. B&N is heading for history’s scrapheap. That’s my story & I’m sticking to it!

Happy reading -
Diane Farr

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/02/28/i-almost-bought-a-book-today-why-im-friends-with-amazon/

Amen. . .

I did see the IPG (Independent Publishers Group)article after I had already written this. I thought there were still in talks, but I could be mistaken.

There is some discussion how publishers would eliminate DRM and level the field:

That Charlie Stross piece is also a great read, and makes the point pretty explicitly that the publishers created their own problem by insisting on DRM’d ebooks:
As ebook sales mushroom, the Big Six’s insistence on DRM has proven to be a hideous mistake. Rather than reducing piracy, it has locked customers in Amazon’s walled garden, which in turn increases Amazon’s leverage over publishers. And unlike pirated copies (which don’t automatically represent lost sales) Amazon is a direct revenue threat because Amazon are have no qualms about squeezing their suppliers — or trying to poach authors for their “direct” publishing channel by offering initially favourable terms. (Which will doubtless get a lot less favourable once the monopoly is secured …)

If the big six began selling ebooks without DRM, readers would at least be able to buy from other retailers and read their ebooks on whatever platform they wanted, thus eroding Amazon’s monopoly position. But it’s not clear that the folks in the boardrooms are agile enough to recognize the tar pit they’ve fallen into …

However it doesn’t make sense to me. If retailers can’t discount e-books because of agency pricing then there is no advantage to me to shop around.

And I like what this author said:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/12/drm-amazon-and-publisher-throa.html

Kassia Krozser: Last week’s rather confusing co-op story — in which Amazon is apparently demanding higher amounts for (digital) co-op and publisher-generated media — highlighted a fundamental truth: all is not fair in love and business. Like its bricks and mortar relatives before it, Amazon will squeeze vendors as much as possible.

But that is pretty much beside the point. Amazon’s consumer base is too large for publishers to play serious hardball — readers have too many options for publishers to lock themselves out of the Amazon readership. And, frankly, it is the policies of many publishers that have led us to what I like to call retailer lock-in.

This KDP/Prime thing with Amazon with their demanding 3 months exclusivity of e-book titles has become very annoying. Yes there are some good deals but an awful lot of slush pile stuff to wade through and I’m wondering how many sales and future business authors are losing because of their restriction to one platform. Most people are not going to follow most authors from one platform to another to buy a book.

Amazon’s margins aren’t looking all that healthy either in their fight to be an industry loss leader to bowl over the competition. Their Net Income for the 4th Quarter was $177 million (less than three times B&N even though their revenues were 7-8 times larger) on about $17.43 billion with a forecast for a loss in the next because of operating expenses

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/technology/amazon-shares-drop-as-revenues-fall-short.html

And this is with other sales aside from Kindle and e-book sales picking up the balance sheet. Kindle like Nook seems at this point to be an investment in the future more than current profit. (B&N’s stores actually made a profit last year unlike the Nook division)

Amazon’s stock has been down at times about 25-30% of it’s highs from last Nov. (when it was in the 240s – now at 180) Investors are looking for larger profit margins and Amazon seems to be responding not by rising prices but by trying to squeeze some of it’s publishers and vendors into smaller margins for their businesses. Look at the recent bust ups with M-Edge which sells covers (but no longer on Amazon) and IPG (which resulted in 5,000 titles being removed from Amazon) when Amazon tried to change the terms in their contracts

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/02/amazon-ipg.html

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-amazon-yanks-5000-kindle-ipg-titles-in-fight-over-terms/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/28/m-edge-suit-accuses-amazon-of-corporate-bullying-patent-infring/

It’s not that I am pro Amazon and anti bookstores per se – it’s just that Amazon usually gets me what I want cheaper and quicker.