working with vulcan to develop and lease hundreds of millions of dollars in south lake union is not being a good neighbor?

people need to get over the fact that amazon plays hardball and isn't run by a bunch of feel-good hippies, even if they are from seattle

props to bezos for not responding to any of this bullshit criticism. hopefully he's an any press is good press type of person and will let it continue.

Why is working with Vulcan to lease South Lake Union being a good neighbor? Doesn't help anyone I know.

Why is gutting the entire book business a good idea?

Why are you writing this post?

Because if anyone has the best interests of authors and readers at heart, it's the publishers. That's why they charge more for ther e-books than they do for their hardcovers(*), that's if they even start selling the e-book before the paperback comes out. They have to protect their profits^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^D^Dthe customer!

It's nice to see the Stranger take a stand with one large industry player against another, though. Don't ever let it be said that you guys settle for consistency!

(*) Less than hardcover MSRP, but Amazon rarely sells hardcovers at MSRP.

Eh, Amazon's role in my life has always been a gigantor internet Walmart. Are we just finally calling a spade a spade?

@2 the book business shot itself in the foot by pretending the internet didn't exist for almost 2 decades

they deserve all the pain coming to them... it's only just begun

and if amazon didn't do it, someone else would have

Amazon really is the Walmart of e-commerce, a ruthless company that crushes competitors by relentlessly striving to offer the lowest price no matter who gets hurt. There are benefits, of course, to low prices. But there are some things in this world that matter more than shaving another 1% off the price of something and companies like Walmart and Amazon get so much flak precisely because they refuse to recognize that.

@6 1%?

have you ever price compared elliott bay books to amazon?

try 30%+

Ask yourself, what service exactly does a "distributor of e-books" perform?

I can't believe you called that NYTimes article excellent. The fact that Carr acknowledges that Apple did the exact same thing that Amazon did (set low price point on a newish format (mp3s) to spur the sales of hardware (ipod) and putting DRM on their format to create a "walled garden"), yet apparently this was totally ok. Because Apple is "now on the side of angels".

And then ends the article with how maybe he'll buy Fifty Shades of Grey from his local bookstore. A fucking novel that started out as flashfic on a Twilight site that was then self-published only as an ebook and print-on-demand, became hugely popular on Amazon and then the author got a publishing deal. I mean is he failing at being ironic or is he just that fucking stupid.

"Publishers are pulling their e-books from Amazon."

That link goes to a story about the publisher of "everybody poops" pulling their physical books from Amazon's inventory to appease their Tupperware party style in-the-field sales consultants. And these books remain available on Amazon through third-party sellers.

When will comrade propose the new five-year plan for books? I am annoyed at market efficiencies creating so much leisure time for comrades to post and comment on blogs.

I'm shocked that this almost certainky false statment made it into David Carr's piece: "Amazon views e-books as cheap software it sells to animate device sales, in this case, the Kindle."

Does ANYONE really believe that Amazon is turning a profit on hardware? I thought that the converse was true -- sell Kindles as loss leaders to make money off of e-books.

I think Charlie Stross makes an excellent point. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-sta…

Publisher's demand for DRM is really what created this situation. Again, I tie it back to the approach that Apple took. And eventually with sites like eMusic and Lala (RIP, how I miss you) offering MP3s DRM-free and showing that it wasn't the end of the world, Apple had to change.

I can't remember at what point Amazon started selling MP3s and I'm too lazy to look it up, but I know that when Lala died I started buying from Amazon (itunes is a horrible piece of shit). And that's where Amazon got their hooks into me. They had a digital purchasing system that was easy to use. I use an iPhone, so I'd already bought into the concept of a "walled garden", so whether it was Apple or Amazon, makes little difference to me.

Anyway, tl;dr, break DRM requirements and you open the marketplace to produce a true competitor to Amazon. (J.K. Rowlings is on the right path).

@ Josh. I had the same reaction to the Everybody Poops publisher (a great book, but still...). I had been hoping one of the big publishers finally grew a pair and stopped selling to Amazon. Regarding Amazon selling Kindles as loss leaders, that may be their longterm plan, but as far as I know, Amazon was selling ebooks at below the cost that they were paying publishers. Amazon was probably not turning a profit on the hardware either. They were using a penetration pricing strategy to win the market first. Profits could come later via higher prices or, more likely, aggressive "negotiating" with publishers and other suppliers. "Dear publisher: We'll pay you $4.99 for your ebooks now, instead of the $12 (or whatever) that we were paying before, and we'll keep charging customers $9.99. Take it or leave it. Your friend, Amazon."

@15 Thanks for the Stross link. It's fantastic and right on. It's time to break the DRM. My one quibble with it is his clumsy idea that Bezos is just looking to make a quick buck because he "came out of a hedge fund." On the contrary, Bezos has been building Amazon for many years and has been growing the company effectively with a longterm horizon. Had he been looking for a quick buck, he would have been out of there a long time ago.