ROUND POND, Me. — Out here in the woods, at the
end of not one but two dirt roads, in a shack equipped with a picture of the
Dalai Lama, a high-speed data line and a copy of Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,”
Amazon’s
dream of dominating the publishing world has run into some trouble.
Douglas Preston, who summers in this coastal
hamlet, is a best-selling writer — or was, until Amazon decided to discourage
readers from buying books from his publisher, Hachette, as a way of pressuring
it into giving Amazon a better deal on e-books. So he wrote an open letter to
his readers asking them to contact Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive,
demanding that Amazon stop using writers as hostages in its negotiations.
The letter, composed in the shack, spread
through the literary community. As of earlier this week 909 writers had signed
on, including household names like John Grisham and Stephen King. It is
scheduled to run as a full-page ad in The New York Times this Sunday.
Amazon, unsettled by the actions of a group
that used to be among its biggest fans, is responding by attacking Mr. Preston,
calling the 58-year-old thriller writer “entitled”
and “an opportunist,” while simultaneously trying to woo him and his fellow
dissenters into silence.
Mr. Preston is unswayed.
“Jeff Bezos used books as the cutting edge to
help sell everything from computer cables to lawn mowers, and what a good idea
that was,” he said. “Now Amazon has turned its back on us. Don’t they value us
more than that? Don’t they feel any loyalty? That’s why authors are mad.”
This latest uproar in Amazon’s
three-month public battle with Hachette comes at a vulnerable moment for the
Internet giant, which is rapidly transforming itself into an empire that not
only sells culture but creates it, too.
Amazon does not want to be seen as hostile to
content creators, one of the four groups it says on
its investor relations web page it is expressly set up to serve. But it also
has to price their creations cheaply enough to draw hordes of consumers, while
at the same time making enough of a profit to satisfy investors.
It is a complicated balancing act. Some argue
it is impossible. Amazon just
surprised Wall Street by saying it may lose more than $800 million this
quarter, potentially wiping out its profits for the last three years, partly
because creating video content is expensive. The prospect of this unexpected
loss has raised questions about whether Amazon’s money-losing ways are finally
catching up with it — and whether that is the real reason it is making new
demands on publishers like Hachette.
Amazon has been forced by the controversy to
shed its longtime practice of refusing to comment on anything. Asked about the
writers’ rebellion, it issued a statement that put the focus back on Hachette,
bringing up the Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Hachette and
other publishers in 2012: “First, Hachette was willing to break the law to get
higher e-book prices, and now they’re determined to keep their own authors in
the line of fire in order to achieve that same end. Amazon has made three
separate proposals to take authors out of the middle, all of which Hachette has
quickly dismissed.”
Mr. Preston pointed out it was Amazon that put
the authors in the line of fire in the first place. Russell Grandinetti,
Amazon’s vice president for e-books, has called Mr. Preston twice in recent
weeks, trying to get him to endorse the company’s proposals to settle the
dispute, as well as to pipe down. The most recent proposal would have Amazon
selling Hachette books again, but with Hachette and Amazon giving their proceeds
to charity.
No thanks, Mr. Preston said. A proposal that
weakens Hachette by cutting its profits was not in the interests of Hachette’s
authors. But he took the opportunity to ask Mr. Grandinetti why Amazon was
squeezing the writers in the first place.
His response, according to Mr. Preston: “This
was the only leverage we had.” Amazon declined to comment.
“It’s like talking to a 5-year-old,” Mr.
Preston said. “ ‘She made me hit her!’ No one is making Amazon do anything.”
No one is making Mr. Preston do anything,
either. He dismisses Amazon’s suggestions that he is a “human shield” for
Hachette, one of the Big 5 publishers in the United States. He and the other
writers say they are acting independently. Most, in any case, are not published
by Hachette.
Mr. Preston is not sure how he has found
himself in charge of a group calling itself Authors United. “I don’t like fighting,” he
said. “I’m a wimp. When the bullies in seventh grade said they would meet me in
the parking lot after school, I made sure I was nowhere near it.”
Other writers who signed the letter include
Robert A. Caro, Junot Díaz, Malcolm Gladwell, Lemony Snicket (the pen name of
Daniel Handler), Michael Chabon, Michael Lewis, Jon Krakauer, Scott Turow,
George Saunders, Sebastian Junger, Philip Pullman and Nora Roberts.
“We feel strongly that no bookseller should
block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from
ordering or receiving the books they want,” the letter states.
Some writers wholeheartedly supported the
letter but were afraid to sign, Mr. Preston said. A few signed it and then
backed out, citing the same reason. The Times ad, which cost $104,000, was paid
for by a handful of the more successful writers.
Mr. Preston’s longtime writing partner,
Lincoln Child, is among those with qualms.
“I am very apprehensive,” Mr. Child said. “Not
all David and Goliath stories end happily for the little guy. But I think Doug
did the right thing.”
Amazon supporters point to a
rival petition on Change.org. It is
a rambling love song to the retailer. Signers sometimes append invective
decrying the New York publishers for having the audacity to reject novels.
“There is something wrong with a system that picks those who use their elitist
ideas of art to choose who is published,” reads a comment.
The petition has 7,650 signatures. By
comparison, a 2012 Change.org petition calling on Amazon to
ban the sale of whale and dolphin meat drew over 200,000 signatures.
Mr. Preston is not one of those writers who
checks his Amazon ranking on a regular basis, or even totes up his sales. He
would rather be writing. But he recently thought he should get some numbers from
Hachette. They came in the other morning, and they seemed worth sharing with his
wife, Christine.
About half his book sales used to come from
Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales
are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent. His last novel,
written with Mr. Child and published by Hachette in November, was “White Fire.”
A week before publication, 25,000 Amazon customers had ordered a copy.
Their new novel, “The Lost Island,” came out
Tuesday. It had only a few thousand pre-orders, all made before Amazon lowered
the boom on Hachette and stopped selling forthcoming Hachette books.
Mrs. Preston, a photographer, studied the
bleak sheet.
“It’s gotten personal,” she said. “I knew you
were going to take a hit, but I had no idea it would be like this.”
“Are you worried?” Mr. Preston asked. “Because
you should be. What if Amazon says, ‘Why should we sell Doug Preston’s books?
He’s a thorn in our sides.’ Guess what? All this goes away.”
There is a lot to go. The shack itself is
negligible, but the house a few steps away is spacious and splendid. It is set
on 300 acres that have been owned by the Preston family for much of the last 100
years. Amazon has tried to use Mr. Preston’s success against him, dismissing him
as “rich” and thus not in touch with the masses of struggling writers.
“It makes me laugh,” he said. “Tech company
billionaires are calling a mere writer ‘rich.’ I think they’re rattled.”
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