I see the previous submission[1] to Hacker News of Matthew Yglesias's <i>Vox</i> essay, "Amazon is doing the world a favor by crushing book publishers,"[2] didn't get much discussion here, but I think the essay supplements the arguments in the <i>Economist</i> blog post kindly submitted here very nicely from the author's side. (The <i>Economist</i> post mostly argues from the reader's side.) I still have plenty to read, and I don't find that Hachette or the other people whining about Amazon are doing as much as Amazon is to provide you and me with more to read at a better price than ever before. As Yglesias writes, "When all is said and done, the argument between Amazon and book publishers is over the rather banal question of price. Amazon's view is that since 'printing' an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should be really cheap. Publishers' view is that since 'printing' an extra copy of an e-book is really cheap, e-books should offer enormous profit margins to book publishers. If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one."<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493736" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8493736</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopoly" rel="nofollow">http://www.vox.com/2014/10/22/7016827/amazon-hachette-monopo...</a>
> On the other hand, it is incredibly easy to go around Amazon.<p>It is tiring to hear that kind of argument all the time to determine if a business is a monopoly ( monopsonist ) or not and then it is supposed to be business 101 to know that people do not optimize their finance to the last cent and can be hooked into a company by habit or convenience.<p>What matters is if amazon clients actually do go around Amazon or not and based on what criteria. Google thinks of Amazon as a threat to their ads business because people use Amazon as their search engine for stuff to buy. I would say that a pretty good indication that the original author may have had a point.<p>> Setting up online stores is not rocket science ( to compete with Amazon )<p>Sorry but I can't read past that. Beside being insulting for anybody that has tried to put an online business together, can a economy journal be taken seriously when publishing that kind of statement in 2014 ?
Amazon vs. Hachette is increasingly one of those battles you'd like no-one to win.<p>The discussions around the conflict have, to me at least, shown pretty clearly that book publishing as it currently is isn't a model which stands up to too much scrutiny when you look at how well it works for anyone outside it.<p>On the other hand I think we'd all rather it wasn't Amazon, a company who many seem to like using but don't trust much further than they can comfortably spit a dead rat, giving it a kicking. The old metaphor about frying pans and fires springs to mind.<p>Maybe we just live in a more cynical time but it would be nice if our disruption was something people generally felt optimistic about.
Of course. It's so easy to use a different book store, even with kindle, that this whole argument holds no water.<p>Since Amazon doesn't really carry Polish books, I get .mobis from random e-stores all the time. It takes no effort. There is no barrier to entry. Well, except actually having something in stock (easy enough when it's an infinitely copyable file) and making your website/UI not atrocious (not that easy, apparently).<p>Most will even email it and Amazon will deliver it straight to the device. No need to look for the usb cable.
<i>But the biggest reason is that one simply cannot argue with any credibility that Amazon has control over the market for buzz. My book buying habits may not be representative of the public at large, but while I almost always buy my books through Amazon I cannot remember the last time I discovered one there.</i><p>Yeah, appeal to the sample size of 1, great argument...<p>I <i>do</i> use Amazon for discovering new books, now he has a sample size of 2 and Amazon controls a massive 50% of the world's "buzz". That changed fast didn't it.<p>I'm sure there are good responses to Krugman out there, but this isn't one.
The article ends in a non serious fashion.So the author discovers his books outside of Amazon.Does this fact has any relevance to how people in general discover books ?<p>On the other hand, Amazon is Google's biggest threat in general product search(and probably discovery). So surely Amazon is even stronger in books.<p>And i'm sure Amazon does play with search/recommendation ranking, and publishers see the effect on sales, or else they wouldn't have bothered with this fight.
So the argument against Amazon is that it is has the potential to do bad things, so they should have restrictions? Surely Krugmen's argument isn't so shallow and petty.
The equation is somewhat complex. eBooks don't cost zero to deliver. In other words, the infrastructure required to deliver them (which includes people, not just servers) at a place like Amazon isn't trivial in cost.<p>And then there's the author's need to earn a respectable living. Obviously that equation produces different numbers based on whether the product (the book being the product) sells a thousand vs. a million copies per year.<p>If a publisher is in the middle then they need to make money to offset their fixed and variable costs. The presumption is that they provide the author with valuable services.<p>I've paid up to $200 for privately published eBooks on very specific subjects from authors with deep expertise in the matter. In this case the authors undertake the entire task of producing the book, often hiring people to help edit, format, illustrate, etc. I wonder how the economics of such ventures works out. In all cases the books have always been worth every penny.<p>One of my pet peeves with Amazon is that they don't offer eBooks in PDF format. I hate the Kindle experience, even on their PC application. I far prefer PDF documents everywhere.
The fatal flaw in the article is this:<p>>><i>On the other hand, it is incredibly easy to go around Amazon. One of the works Amazon is supposedly dooming, according to Mr Krugman, is a book called "Sons of Wichita". But if one googles "Sons of Wichita", then one of the first results is the book's page at the website of Barnes & Noble, a rival online bookseller. Barnes & Noble offers a competitive price and 24-hour delivery (same day delivery in Manhattan!).</i><p>There is a fundamental difference in how people search for books compared to other items. Since people know Amazon has such a huge inventory, they go to Amazon and THEN search for their title. 99% of people I know do not simply Google a book title and then select the first result they get in Google, it just doesn't happen that way.<p>This is an important fact which undermines the idea it's "easy" for consumers to selectively use another vendor to get their books from. It also gives a lot more weight to the fact Amazon really is a monopsony.
I live in Manhattan and love both Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's same day service as well as Amazon Prime's free 2 day and low cost overnight shipping. I have also had great customer service with Amazon.<p>I don't understand why Krugman wrote a column about a firm which offers great selection at low cost with rapid low-cost or free shipping. Customer service is great as well. If only all firms aspired to be Amazon!
This may be a silly question, but could publishers simply set up their own Amazon storefronts? That is, could I buy a book from "Hachette, fulfilled by Amazon" if Hachette was willing to set things up on their end? I'm sure that the current dispute would make this approach untenable, but I have to wonder why publishers aren't using Amazon services to sell books at their preferred prices.
From the first sentence:<p>>LAST week, the Nobel prize in economics was awarded to Jean Tirole<p>There is no such thing as the Nobel prize in economics. The prize's real name is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It's not a Nobel prize.