Lunch's Take on Orwell Kindle Caper
What We Talk About When We Talk About Amazon
Last week was a bizarre one in the annals of Amazon-dominated news, closing with Friday's Orwellian removal of unauthorized editions of two books by the actual George Orwell from a small number of Kindle owners' libraries.
Among the things I find interesting about the story:
* Internet outrage began with an incorrect blog post on the NYT's site from columnist David Pogue who shot first without asking: "Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved," Pogue wrote. Bear in mind that Pogue has made a substantial amount of money as both author and co-publisher of computer books, but he assumes the worst of publishers from the outset.
* Amazon's open-publishing platform for Kindle (and the popularity on the device of free and very cheap public domain works) requires more vetting/monitoring than it has received to date. As Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener explained on Friday: "These books [unauthorized editions of 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded by MobileReference according to customers] were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third party who did not have the rights to the books."
While this is the story that wound up making news, customers posting on Amazon's discussion board have reported seeing other unauthorized editions available--including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ("yes, illegal copies actually made it through for all of about an hour here on Monday.")
* Famous for putting the customer first--at least in the service of selling other people's physical goods--Amazon is encountering a number of challenges as producer/seller of their own device and in the new world of selling physical goods. In the case of the unauthorized Kindle books,
"when we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers." That's what ignited the real firestorm from Kindle customers.
For customers, however, it was a reminder that they are licensing the right to view a file rather than owning it. And it showed how the cool Whispernet--which downloads books "in 60 seconds or less," can also make those books disappear just as quickly. In this, Amazon appears to have overstepped the provisions of its own terms of service. (The NYT wrote, "Amazon's published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a 'permanent copy of the applicable digital content.') Of course for all of us, it's also a reminder of one reason why ebooks are "worth less" to customers: they come with fewer privileges.
Hence spokesman Herdener's additional comment: "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."
* But Amazon's customer service left customers disappointed in other ways, too. When the unauthorized files were removed, the explanation was less than candid. In e-mails reproduced on the company's forum, customer say they were told via e-mail only that "we recently discovered a problem with a Kindle book that you have purchased."
* That customer service failure echoes a story from earlier last week that got dramatically less national pick-up even though for the affected customers it's a much more serious issue: the lawsuit filed by one customer (seeking class action status) regarding a cracked Kindle they allege was damaged by the cover.
All of this is interesting viewed against the first Amazon-driven story of the week--also continuing this week: the fight over the $9.95 price point, and publishers' strategic questions about release windows for certain ebooks. (Clearly anything Amazon/Kindle related is now receiving disproportionate attention from mainstream press--and those stories are going to focus on battles and failures more than anything else.) To echo one of our themes from last week's pricing post, Amazon is suffering by not being completely candid with their customers; publishers should avoid the same mistake and tell the truth, and the complete truth, about their pricing concerns.
At the same time, if you are not both watching and participating in Amazon's abundant Kindle customer forums, you are missing out. There are customers who understand (and regularly track) the $9.95 price fallacy--but they don't know whom to blame for the "bait and switch."
Watch the Kindle bestsellers and you'll see that right now all of the top 5 ebooks are free--as are 7 of the top 10, and 15 of the top 25. When publishers talk to the press about pricing, you should mention all the ebooks you give away, as well as all of the titles that are published simultaneously with the print edition. (Meanwhile, despite all the supposed resistance to paying over $9.95 for an ebook, one of the top paid titles on the Kindle bestseller list remains Breaking Dawn, selling at $11.38, now after "352 days in the top 100."
For still more on pricing, both Mike Shatzkin and Evan Schnittman are looking at some of the issues on their blogs.
Last week was a bizarre one in the annals of Amazon-dominated news, closing with Friday's Orwellian removal of unauthorized editions of two books by the actual George Orwell from a small number of Kindle owners' libraries.
Among the things I find interesting about the story:
* Internet outrage began with an incorrect blog post on the NYT's site from columnist David Pogue who shot first without asking: "Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved," Pogue wrote. Bear in mind that Pogue has made a substantial amount of money as both author and co-publisher of computer books, but he assumes the worst of publishers from the outset.
* Amazon's open-publishing platform for Kindle (and the popularity on the device of free and very cheap public domain works) requires more vetting/monitoring than it has received to date. As Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener explained on Friday: "These books [unauthorized editions of 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded by MobileReference according to customers] were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third party who did not have the rights to the books."
While this is the story that wound up making news, customers posting on Amazon's discussion board have reported seeing other unauthorized editions available--including Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ("yes, illegal copies actually made it through for all of about an hour here on Monday.")
* Famous for putting the customer first--at least in the service of selling other people's physical goods--Amazon is encountering a number of challenges as producer/seller of their own device and in the new world of selling physical goods. In the case of the unauthorized Kindle books,
"when we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers." That's what ignited the real firestorm from Kindle customers.
For customers, however, it was a reminder that they are licensing the right to view a file rather than owning it. And it showed how the cool Whispernet--which downloads books "in 60 seconds or less," can also make those books disappear just as quickly. In this, Amazon appears to have overstepped the provisions of its own terms of service. (The NYT wrote, "Amazon's published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a 'permanent copy of the applicable digital content.') Of course for all of us, it's also a reminder of one reason why ebooks are "worth less" to customers: they come with fewer privileges.
Hence spokesman Herdener's additional comment: "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."
* But Amazon's customer service left customers disappointed in other ways, too. When the unauthorized files were removed, the explanation was less than candid. In e-mails reproduced on the company's forum, customer say they were told via e-mail only that "we recently discovered a problem with a Kindle book that you have purchased."
* That customer service failure echoes a story from earlier last week that got dramatically less national pick-up even though for the affected customers it's a much more serious issue: the lawsuit filed by one customer (seeking class action status) regarding a cracked Kindle they allege was damaged by the cover.
All of this is interesting viewed against the first Amazon-driven story of the week--also continuing this week: the fight over the $9.95 price point, and publishers' strategic questions about release windows for certain ebooks. (Clearly anything Amazon/Kindle related is now receiving disproportionate attention from mainstream press--and those stories are going to focus on battles and failures more than anything else.) To echo one of our themes from last week's pricing post, Amazon is suffering by not being completely candid with their customers; publishers should avoid the same mistake and tell the truth, and the complete truth, about their pricing concerns.
At the same time, if you are not both watching and participating in Amazon's abundant Kindle customer forums, you are missing out. There are customers who understand (and regularly track) the $9.95 price fallacy--but they don't know whom to blame for the "bait and switch."
Watch the Kindle bestsellers and you'll see that right now all of the top 5 ebooks are free--as are 7 of the top 10, and 15 of the top 25. When publishers talk to the press about pricing, you should mention all the ebooks you give away, as well as all of the titles that are published simultaneously with the print edition. (Meanwhile, despite all the supposed resistance to paying over $9.95 for an ebook, one of the top paid titles on the Kindle bestseller list remains Breaking Dawn, selling at $11.38, now after "352 days in the top 100."
For still more on pricing, both Mike Shatzkin and Evan Schnittman are looking at some of the issues on their blogs.
