Well, Amazon has finally driven me to end my relationship with them as a customer and affiliate. I’ve been a customer pretty much since the beginning and spent thousands of my hard-earned dollars at their store. The pricing and convenience simply can’t be passed up. However I’ve never been pleased with how they have become something of the Wal-Mart of the book world that helps drive the smaller guys out of business, I don’t support their eBook practice of loading up the books with DRM and having proprietary format for the eBooks and eReader, I was unhappy to learn that if you buy an eBook from Amazon that they can take it back from you whenever they want, no explanation needed, and I was very unhappy when a supposed computer glitch lead to all GLBT and related books being dropped out of their search engine and rankings. But that was all just annoyances that didn’t cause me to end my relationship with them. The latest fiasco happened when Amazon went nuclear and de-listed all of Macmillan’s books in what should have been a behind-the-scenes negotiation. Not only was this a very hard-ball and ultimately childish tactic, but it hurt authors who have no control over the situation and showed a complete disregard for their customers – apparently power is what really matters to Amazon. This was the last straw.
Below are a few links that sum up this latest fiasco – Amazon ultimately has caved in, but while I was writing this post, they still hadn’t followed through by actually putting links back up to Macmillan’s books – childish and dishonest now.
Below are a few links that sum up this latest fiasco – Amazon ultimately has caved in, but while I was writing this post, they still hadn’t followed through by actually putting links back up to Macmillan’s books – childish and dishonest now.
- SF Signal – a good summary with links to many reactions (a bit out of date now)
- Tobias Buckell – a good summary on the economics
- Charles Stross – a debatable take on the issue
And the Best:
- Suvudu "Nobody blogs like a pissed off science fiction writer."
So, I am no longer going to include Amazon links to the books I talk about here. For now, old links will remain, but I’ll slowly take the time to go back and remove them in older posts as well. Instead I will link to these books through the affiliate programs of Powell’s Books, The Book Depository, and Indiebound. For some disclosure – in the 4 years of this blog I have only received about $50 in referral revenue (all from Amazon.com) and that all immediately turned around to buy books. I don’t expect to make money and that’s never been the goal of this blog, but I do want to help facilitate getting books into the hands of book lovers, so I do the links. And if along the way I can get a little extra cash to feed my addiction then great. So, if you appreciate what I do hear, click on the occasional link and help feed my addiction.
