If you’ve been hiding under your rock and playing Star Trek Online more than me over the weekend, you might have missed the fact that Amazon and Macmillan are having a little conflict.
It reminds me of the heady days of high school, when pretty much everyone was just trying to get to class and then two enormous jerks that you didn’t even know would start shoving each other. Suddenly the hallway would become a clogged mass of students, with those on the inner ring chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” and the rest of us just wishing those assholes would knock each other out already because we were going to be late to class and there’s a danger of claustrophobia when you’re being crushed by a bunch of your stinky, hormonal fellow teens.
Anyway, Scalzi, whose altar I worship at daily just so you know, is of the opinion that Amazon’s come out looking like a bigger pile of fail than Macmillan. Quite possibly. But he’s also gone on to further emphasize the point that the people who are getting really screwed are the authors.
I don’t really see a point in taking sides in this particular corporate slugfest, even if I agree that Amazon is coming across like a petulant child. But it is the authors that are getting hurt, and badly. Particularly since Amazon hasn’t completely pulled their titles; you can still buy them used or from other resellers, which means the authors get cut out of the deal entirely. Now, if you’re in the market for used books normally, that doesn’t make much of a difference, but if you occasionally buy books with the thought of getting a good read plus the warm fuzzy of helping one of the little guys pay their mortgage, it reveals itself as quite the dick move.
Supposedly Amazon has caved. As of the time I’m writing this post, the Macmillan titles are still unavailable through the regular Amazon store, however. And even after it goes back to normal, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this sort of ridiculous skirmish happen again in the near future. I think it just serves as a very important reminder that when corporate titans clash, as amusing as it can be to watch, it also comes with the potential to hurt the livelihood of people who have absolutely no say in what caused the mess to begin with1.
It just means that we dedicated book nerds need to be a little flexible in our book-buying habits. Personally, I don’t give a rat’s behind which giant bookstore chain gets my money when I buy a copy of, say, Old Man’s War. I just want to know that Scalzi’s getting his little sliver of the pie so he’ll write something else fantastic for me to read in the near future.
1 – Obviously, this is not unique to the publishing world.