I might not be Gladwell's biggest fan but there is no way he is as confused about this situation as he is pretending to be. Not surprising he wants to stay out of this fight, but I am surprised he took on a naive bumpkin caricature to do so.
For those interested in a longer analysis of what Amazon's relationship with publishers looks like, I'd recommend George Packer's article from the New Yorker earlier this year:
One of the pleasant takeaways from this is this entirely expected economic reaction to Amazon's behavior
"Amazon’s competitors are trying to seize the advantage. Walmart.com, for instance, is promoting Hachette titles at 40 percent off, and said Friday that its online book sales had jumped as a result."
If anything this seems like the customer is the one that is being used as a bargaining chip, not Malcolm Gladwell. There are two companies trying to get their way, refusing to budge, and using whatever tools are at their disposal to try to get the other to acquiesce.
The good thing about authors speaking up is that it cuts through the common techie meme that authors and publishers don't have aligned interests. The same is true for other "dinosaur industries" like record labels and artists.
If I correctly understand you to be saying that record labels and artists have aligned interests? I don't think most artists would agree. Not due to any techie meme. It's a musician "meme", or rather ~50 years of history of labels screwing the vast preponderance of musicians. (Short version: Paying tiny advances, followed by no royalties due to creative accounting of supposed expenses.)
It might be the case that a few platinum artists have more in common with their labels. As might a bestselling author like Gladwell with his publisher.
~50 years of history of labels screwing the vast preponderance of musicians
I think you might be looking in the wrong end of that. The preponderance of musicians screw the labels. They sign a contract, chew up a bunch of production and marketing money, then fail to make music that enough people want to pay for the up front costs. Then the musicians don't have to give back the up front money after making some complete floater of an album.
Now, the one percenters of the music world, you know, the acts from the '60s through '90s that 1 out of 3 people actually remember. Lots of them think they should have gotten richer, and lots of them did sign contracts that had they known their label would make them a one percenter they never would have signed. But that isn't the preponderance of musicians. That is just the musicians associated with the preponderance of a label's revenue.
The poster boy that has been held up by techies for years was Trent Reznor, who went independent in 2007. He's since signed with Columbia Records for An Omen and Hesitation Marks. The next NIN album will be with Interscope.
The labels provide him value, as they do for many artists.
They provided him value, but only because he provided them more. Just because one superstar with leverage gets value from the labels doesn't mean every artist does.
Because they are young and naive, or short-sighted, or believe that they will become one of those few platinum artists.
The last probably accounts for most of it. I forget the exact saying at the moment, but it is something about everyone in America believing that they are destined to be a rich person, and make decisions/vote in a way that would only be in their best interests if they were rich.
If you actually believe that this is what has sustained the business model of record labels for all this time then I don't know what to tell you, you certainly don't understand their business and what they do.
Why did Trent Reznor sign with Columbia afer releasing music independently for many years? It's because they provide value to him.
Because Trent Reznor is a big enough name, he can control the conditions of the contract. He also has proven he is willing to go without the studios if need be, which, for a known artist, is a huge bargaining chip.
Using him as a shining example is to be incredibly naive about how contract negotiation works. Nobody is saying that recording studios do nothing (just handling distribution is big), just that they suck out far more value than they provide for the average artist.
Whether you are small or well known will impact your terms with the label, but that's a private business negotiation and not related to my point. The premise of my original comment is that they have aligned interests and that's because they provide value to the artist that signs with them. There are plenty of artists that are with indie labels or who are independent and the artist is free to choose whatever arrangement they want.
Trent Reznor went back to record labels because he's going to make more money with a record label, even if he's going to keep less share of the profit.
> [y]our terms with the label [is] a private business negotiation and not related to my point
> Trent Reznor went back to record labels because he's going to make more money with a record label, even if he's going to keep less share of the profit.
I'm sorry but you seem a little confused. You can't hand wave that the terms of the contract are irrelevant but also assert that he is making a smaller cut of the pie with the label.
His share of the pie is smaller but the pie is much bigger. What terms he negotiated with his label has nothing to do with the fact that labels serve a purpose and are aligned with the interests of the artist.
People sign up with record labels because record label representatives tell them stories about people like Trent Reznor, and lead them to believe that Trent Reznor is the rule, rather than the exception.
What is he going to say? Amazon is letting a business dispute worsen the customer experience. Bezos has said that their job is to make the best customer experience possible, and if they did, that everything else would work itself out. Apparently, this dispute is worth dismissing that vision.
"When we negotiate with suppliers, we are doing so on behalf of customers. Negotiating for acceptable terms is an essential business practice that is critical to keeping service and value high for customers in the medium and long term." is the relevant quote for how it's not killing customer experience.
The short term customer experience is indeed impacted, but in the long run, I'd rather have more reasonably priced ebooks.
Of course, this is Amazon so they're not going to just say "yup, we're doing this out of greed, screw the customer". It's up to you if you believe what they did say or not.
I've been seeing a lot of news on this, and most people are crying out against Amazon for hurting authors. However it's their publisher who had the federal government on their back for price fixing.
It was their publisher who instigated this. Amazon is a retailer and when 5/6ths of the big publishers conspire to price fix, you can bet every one of them is going to have their necks on the cutting block.
Amazon does not need these publishers, they are no longer an online book company they're one of the worlds biggest retailers. These publishers need Amazon, they're a massive retailer known for books.
It's more correct to describe the collusion of the publishers as a cartel than as a monopolist here. They work together in collusive price-fixing arrangements.
Amazon may have just enough market power as a customer of theirs to break this arrangement, however it would be quite a stretch to call Amazon a monopsony.
Sure, somebody has to ring the bell. But rest assured, this case was standing on its very own legs.
People have this tendency to jump to the "big questions" that the law and judges simply aren't concerned with. There was very clear evidence here, and your opinion of Amazon doesn't factor into it.
GP wasn't making a statement about the impartiality of legal processes [1], they were making a statement about the evidence in this case. If you'd like to dispute that, I'd suggest looking at some of it.
[1] In fact, the comment "somebody has to ring the bell" suggests significant awareness of biases in and limitations of legal processes.
Perhaps. Or they'll just download it or ignore it. There's several books I've wanted to read, but they aren't on Kindle and there's so much to read so I just move on.
Additionally probably half of my Kindle purchases are impulse purchases, and half of those are done right on the device itself.
