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US Authors Guild attacks Amazon over Kindle Lending
15.11.11 | Graeme Neill
The US Authors Guild has accused Amazon.com of "boldly breaching its contracts" with publishers by signing them up to its new Kindle Lending programme without permission.
It claimed it is doing this to drive sales of its Kindle Fire, which is up against the Apple iPad and Barnes & Noble Nook in the US' increasingly fraught e-reader wars.
The lending service was launched in the United States earlier this month although none of the "big six" publishers - Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan - have signed up to it. US Kindle owners with Prime membership can download one book per month for free, but only borrow one at a time.
The US Authors Guild claimed Amazon's attempts to enlist publishers outside the big six have largely failed. However, it said many of these publishers' titles have appeared on the service because of a "tortured reading" of boilerplate contracts. It said: "Amazon has decided that it doesn’t need the publishers’ permission, because, as Amazon apparently sees it, its contracts with these publishers merely require it to pay publishers the wholesale price of the books that Amazon Prime customers download. By reasoning this way, Amazon claims it can sell e-books at any price, even giving them away, so long as the publishers are paid."
The US Authors Guild said Amazon's boilerplate contracts "specifically" refer to the sale of e-books and nothing else. It said: "Amazon, in other words, appears to be boldly breaching its contracts with these publishers. This is an exercise of brute economic power. Amazon knows it can largely dictate terms to non-Big Six publishers, and it badly wanted to launch this program with some notable titles."
It recommended authors check if their titles are available through the service and it believed publishers do not have the right to lend titles through Amazon's boilerplate without author approval.
Amazon.com was unavailable for comment.
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We must be very close to a thin-end-of-the-wedge moment. As publishers we create and curate, we nurture and plan over many years, but now, all of this can be consumed in a few short keystrokes. Of course, consumers drive choices, but if you give everybody what they want, all the time, at cheap prices, with instant availability we will end up with an utterly devalued, quality-free system of digital channel publishing. Amazon have opened up real choices for both consumers and authors but that doesn't mean all choice is automatically good. Amazon's model sells convenience and uses content as a loss leader for the bigger ticket items that make the real money online. I love the opportunity afforded to us all, if we adapt, by smartphones, tablets and online publishing, but this new move could finally be the one to resist.
I am not sure of the legalities involved however I do see some positives for authors.
I would like to see a fee paid for each use besides the purchase price Amazon pays for the titles.
This is an opportunity for authors to be read and therefore to enlarge their reader base as a result of this model.
I don't like the idea of large sum payments as I think publishers will find a way to keep most of the money. Maybe a system can be designed so as a writer is downloaded in the program for royalties to be paid to authors on that basis. That would be fair as some authors will have more downloads then others.
I certainly feel it would be to Amazon's benefit to work out a deal between all the parties than to try to go it alone. As new ideas come along and technology changes it is in Amazon's and all retailers interests to have a good working relationship with authors, agents and publishers in the new retail space.
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
http://www.tridentmediagroup.com
The Bat Says: eNumbers can so easily be manipulated: I wonder how eAuthors will verify how many of their eBooks any of the commissioning/publishing/library-lending eRetailers have really sold.
I hope they've signed with an honest firm...now all the old-school checks-&-balances of agents, printers, wholesalers, libraries & bookshops & even EPOS have been taken out of the loop.
We must be very close to a thin-end-of-the-wedge moment. As publishers we create and curate, we nurture and plan over many years, but now, all of this can be consumed in a few short keystrokes. Of course, consumers drive choices, but if you give everybody what they want, all the time, at cheap prices, with instant availability we will end up with an utterly devalued, quality-free system of digital channel publishing. Amazon have opened up real choices for both consumers and authors but that doesn't mean all choice is automatically good. Amazon's model sells convenience and uses content as a loss leader for the bigger ticket items that make the real money online. I love the opportunity afforded to us all, if we adapt, by smartphones, tablets and online publishing, but this new move could finally be the one to resist.
I am not sure of the legalities involved however I do see some positives for authors.
I would like to see a fee paid for each use besides the purchase price Amazon pays for the titles.
This is an opportunity for authors to be read and therefore to enlarge their reader base as a result of this model.
I don't like the idea of large sum payments as I think publishers will find a way to keep most of the money. Maybe a system can be designed so as a writer is downloaded in the program for royalties to be paid to authors on that basis. That would be fair as some authors will have more downloads then others.
I certainly feel it would be to Amazon's benefit to work out a deal between all the parties than to try to go it alone. As new ideas come along and technology changes it is in Amazon's and all retailers interests to have a good working relationship with authors, agents and publishers in the new retail space.
Robert Gottlieb
Chairman
Trident Media Group, LLC
http://www.tridentmediagroup.com
The Bat Says: eNumbers can so easily be manipulated: I wonder how eAuthors will verify how many of their eBooks any of the commissioning/publishing/library-lending eRetailers have really sold.
I hope they've signed with an honest firm...now all the old-school checks-&-balances of agents, printers, wholesalers, libraries & bookshops & even EPOS have been taken out of the loop.