| Just an FYI because you seem wholly ignorant of what's actually gone on, but it was Apple and five of the Big Six (Hatchette included) who were sued by the DOJ in a civil antitrust case for ebook price fixing trying to push prices up by up to $5 to make ebooks more expensive than their hardback counterparts that, unlike the booming paperback sales, are falling of a cliff. Basically Hatchette and co was trying to illegally force up the price of eBooks for a company responsible for over half of all their sales. There's a reason why Walmart and Costco can make or break companies, and there's a reason why every other publisher so far has come to amicable terms with Amazon when their renewals came up and that's because they'd already fucked with Amazon. Hatchette is currently trying to use public pressure to extort Amazon into doing what Hatchette has already been sued for: price fixing. Amazon is a retailer, and retailers have every right to discontinue carrying any product they want at any time for any reason as long as it doesn't void a contract... and hey look! Hatchettes contract ran out. Amazon is currently being graceful by continuing to sell any of Hatchettes product. The notion that Amazon is the "bad guy" here is quite frankly idiotic. Hatchette tried to do something illegal to hurt consumers (you know the people who pay writers wages). Now again they're trying to negotiate elevated ebook prices and take away Amazons ability to discount books to hurt consumers (again, you know the people who pay writers wages through that 10-15% royalty). And now Hatchette is the one who's unable to agree to terms that the other publishers so far have managed to, and they've held in a deadlock for three months where their writers are seeing their incomes halved. Hatchette is part of a massive publishing conglomerate trying to prop up corporate profits as Hardback sales evaporate. They're in this out of their own interest and have clearly showed they're willing to use their authors as weapons and have the audacity to try to make public outrage against Amazon for their own actions. It was Amazon who offered to help pay the authors for their lost wages during the dispute, which Hatchette has failed to accept (because it would require them matching Amazon's contribution) - but Penguin accepted during their unheard of contract dispute a few months prior to this. So not only is Hatchette actively fucking their own authors with this contract dispute, they're not even TRYING to compensate them when "THE BAD GUY" is. |