{"id":689,"date":"2010-02-02T23:21:57","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T03:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/?p=689"},"modified":"2010-02-02T23:21:57","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T03:21:57","slug":"how-much-do-i-care-about-amazon-and-macmillan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2010\/02\/how-much-do-i-care-about-amazon-and-macmillan\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Do I Care About Amazon and Macmillan?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I was reading my daily blog circuit, I asked myself, “How much do I care about this Amazon and Macmillan thing, anyway?” \u00c2\u00a0After thinking it over for a while, I decided that I care quite a bit. \u00c2\u00a0Enough for a blog post, even, and everyone knows that if it’s blog worthy, then it is vital<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So what is the Amazon-Macmillan thing, anyway? \u00c2\u00a0The short version is that Macmillan said that it wants to sell its ebook-for-the-Kindle at prices up to $15<\/a>, and that’s $5 more than Amazon has set the price at. \u00c2\u00a0Amazon’s reaction was to pull all Macmillan<\/a> ebooks, hardcovers, and softcovers from its store – no sales. \u00c2\u00a0After a couple days Amazon publicly relented<\/a>, but the store still isn’t back to normal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First, I’ll give two reasons that I don’t care about. \u00c2\u00a0I don’t care about is the Kindle. \u00c2\u00a0I hate the Kindle’s DRM, and I’m mildly surprised that so many otherwise-astute customers are willing to go along with it. \u00c2\u00a0Why on earth would you “buy” a copy of a book that Amazon can remotely remove from your possession<\/a> without your consent ? \u00c2\u00a0You can pry my books out of my cold, dead hands is the way I feel about that type of thing.<\/p>\n

The second thing I don’t care about is the price increase. \u00c2\u00a0One company is trying to keep prices low so that it can create a huge marketshare useful for future profits. \u00c2\u00a0One company wants to have a higher profit margin on bestselling books. \u00c2\u00a0I couldn’t possibly care less which one wins; they’re both trying to extract money out of me.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I do care about: my relationship with Amazon. \u00c2\u00a0I’ve been their customer since 1998. \u00c2\u00a0(I even worked for them for a while in ’98-’99, when they bought PlanetAll.com). \u00c2\u00a0I use them because they’re easy and they have a decent price. \u00c2\u00a0I use them for their recommendations. \u00c2\u00a0I use them to let me know when my favorite authors and bands have new releases. \u00c2\u00a0I use them to complete trilogies and to find the early releases of my new favorite bands. \u00c2\u00a0I order from them so much that I bought Amazon Prime for $79\/year, which gives me free shipping. \u00c2\u00a0Think about what my order volume is, given that I would spend more than $79 in shipping!<\/p>\n

But I love my John Scalzi<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0I love my Charles Stross<\/a>. \u00c2\u00a0I love my Orson Scott Card, Vernor Vinge and Neal Asher. \u00c2\u00a0And Amazon isn’t giving them to me! \u00c2\u00a0What kind of book store would I go to that wouldn’t sell me these authors? \u00c2\u00a0What kind of recommendation engine would skip these authors who have provided me with so many hours of amusement? \u00c2\u00a0The answer is: not one that I want to spend a lot of time in.<\/p>\n

I’m not going so far as to boycott Amazon. \u00c2\u00a0When they have what I want at the right price, I’ll still buy it. \u00c2\u00a0But they’re no longer my go-to vendor. \u00c2\u00a0They’re no longer the place I go to find the new album or the new book that will keep me interested. \u00c2\u00a0I don’t trust them to give me the right answer anymore. \u00c2\u00a0I now know that they’re willing to throw away 1\/6 of my bookshelf in order to wield pricing power on a product that I’ll never buy. Amazon broke my trust this weekend, and I’m no longer interested in what they think I’ll find interesting.<\/p>\n

I logged in to Amazon tonight and set my Amazon Prime to non-renewal status. \u00c2\u00a0They didn’t ask why. \u00c2\u00a0I guess I know why not: they don’t care about what I want, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I was reading my daily blog circuit, I asked myself, “How much do I care about this Amazon and Macmillan thing, anyway?” \u00c2\u00a0After thinking it over for a while, I decided that I care quite a bit. \u00c2\u00a0Enough for a blog post, even, and everyone knows that if it’s blog worthy, then it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":690,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}