My Kindle with some of the books I’m currently reading.
The other day I was tuning in radio shows on the internet. I happened to hear author Nelson DeMille on the Mark Simone radio show (WOR 710 AM out of New York, NY). You can hear the broadcast here.
It seems Amazon.com isn’t being as open to writers and book publishers as one would think. Approximately 900 authors signed an open leter to amazon. In part it reads:
Amazon is involved in a commercial dispute with the book publisher Hachette , which owns Little, Brown, Grand Central Publishing, and other familiar imprints. These sorts of disputes happen all the time between companies and they are usually resolved in a corporate back room.
But in this case, Amazon has done something unusual. It has directly targeted Hachette’s authors in an effort to force their publisher to agree to its terms.
For the past several months, Amazon has been:
—Boycotting Hachette authors, by refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette authors’ books and eBooks, claiming they are “unavailable.”
—Refusing to discount the prices of many of Hachette authors’ books.
—Slowing the delivery of thousands of Hachette authors’ books to Amazon customers, indicating that delivery will take as long as several weeks on most titles.
–Suggesting on some Hachette authors’ pages that readers might prefer a book from a non-Hachette author instead.
I love to read. And if you love to read (and own a Kindle), you’ll want to pay attention to this dispute. It affects authors, publishers and readers.
You can read the entire text of the authors’ letter at:
You can also get an encapsulated breakdown of the dispute here.
