“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
– Mark Twain, Notebook, 1904

When I first heard of Amazon’s “bullying” tactics against Hachette, I was shouting angrily right along with the herd … I mean crowd.

Actually, no. I mean herd.

Taking Twain’s advice, I looked a little deeper into my knee-jerk alignment with the majority. You don’t have to look deeper, now, because the tawdry timeline has been laid out in the letter Amazon sent to writers and lit agents a few days back. Skip to the bottom to read the full letter; I’ve put the timeline in bold.

The allegations there include Hachette stumbling their way past the expiration of their contract with Amazon, ignoring attempts by Amazon to behave like a responsible and professional partner by dealing with that expiration before it happened, taking months to respond to business correspondence from Amazon, failing to keep their word on providing a timely counteroffer, and failure to diligently and promptly represent the best interests of their authors and customers.

As I pointed out earlier, Hachette’s response really doesn’t do much to refute the allegations. In one particularly bizarre response, Hachette characterized Amazon not honoring the contract Hachette allowed to expire as imposing “sanctions” on Hachette books. Do they understand how business works?

Is Amazon’s economic scale a problem? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But that doesn’t mean the entitled oafishness of publishers like Hachette should simply be ignored. The cultural malaise of traditional publishers is far more problematic for authors and readers than the sheer immensity of Amazon. And, the absurdity only gets worse… Continue reading →