TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
Steve Weber, author/publisher tells his experiences with Amazon
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009By Paul Biba
Editor’s note: I received an email from Steve Weber, a writer/publisher, about his experiences recently with Amazon. It was most interesting and I asked Steve if he could “pontificate” a bit more for publication on TeleRead. Well, he did and here is experience in the front lines of Amazon bookselling/publishing. By the way, Steve did not include any url to his own site, so I had to find it myself. Says something for his credibility:
For the past 10 years, I’ve earned a good living by writing about Amazon.com and selling books on its Web site. Without Amazon, I could never have quit my job to pursue two hobbies — operating a bookshop, and building a self-publishing empire from my basement, using a $200 PC. Unfortunately, I may be forced into early retirement.
By offering the widest selection of books and the world’s most innovative, competitive marketplace, Amazon nurtured me and thousands of other independent writers and hobbyist booksellers. Recently, however, the company has taken a series of steps to stifle competition and consumer choice. I believe it’s time for antitrust regulators to consider Amazon’s practices, particularly in the emerging areas of electronic books and digitally printed paperbacks.
Partly because of the worldwide exposure Amazon has delivered, I’ve been able to give away thousands of my books at popular Web sites such as Smashwords.com, Feedbooks.com, Manybooks.net Scribd.com and others. My motives aren’t entirely altruistic. Like many other forward-thinking authors, I believe that giving my words away generates an even bigger market for those ideas and, ultimately, profits for Amazon.
So I was alarmed when Amazon recently censored a book review on its site for my new title, “ePublish.” Amazon’s staff edited the reviewer’s words to obscure the fact he had obtained the book free. This reader from The Netherlands, unbeknownst to me, downloaded a complimentary copy of “ePublish” from Smashwords.com, then reviewed the work on Amazon.com. After Amazon’s censorship the review now reads, “I downloaded the e-bBook version of this book from [...] and couldn’t stop reading until I finished it.” http://www.amazon.com/dp/0977240657/
Was this merely a hamfisted antic by a low-level Amazon employee? Perhaps, but it fits the context of recent changes at Amazon to restrict competition in publishing, resulting in less choice and higher prices for the reading public.
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Book overview | Buy in E or P
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