Publishing NewsAmazon / anti-trust / Authors United / Book-club / Department of Justice / discrimination / editors / gender norms / micro aggression / parenting / publishing3 Comments
Is Amazon Creating a Cultural Monopoly? – As much as I admire the tenacity of the Authors United group, their singular fixation on Amazon feels more and more like publisher pressure by proxy. I remember Jon Sargent trying to make the value argument about Agency Pricing – that more valuable ... more >
Letters of OpinionAuthors United / Books / bookselling / consumer goods / reading / value68 Comments
We’re all familiar with the assertion that books are “special,” and therefore deserving of different treatment than other commercial products. I used believe it myself. Until, that is, folks like Jon Sargent and Authors United started using it to justify crap like agency pricing and the shunning of Amazon. To ... more >
Publishing NewsAmazon / Amtrak / antitrust / Authors United / Banned-Books / censorship / gender / Hachette / publishing / television11 Comments
Authors United’s Next Move: DOJ – Apparently this story originally appears in the Financial Times, but since the site has a paywall, I’m not going to link to it. So not many details beyond the fact that Authors United is now urging the Department of Justice ti investigate Amazon. Does ... more >
Publishing NewsAmazon / Authors United / copyright / declaratory judgment / deposition / gender / History / photography / publishing / Race / Victorian England23 Comments
Letter to Amazon.com, Inc. board of directors – It was difficult to pick out the most offensive passage in this Authors United letter to the Amazon board of directors. From the Eurocentric insult to China and Chinese authors, to the misperception that books are not commercial products (does this mean ... more >
Publishing NewsAmazon / amnesia / authors / Authors United / blogging / Google / Hachette / lawsuit / readers / reviews / technology19 Comments
French blogger fined over review’s Google search placing – This is super-crazy and super-scary. A French blogger who wrote a negative restaurant review was ruled against because she had a significant blog following and because the review placed too high in the Google rankings. The French judge who made this ... more >