See? Amazon *Does* Think Books Are Special Snowflakes!

Today I found myself ruminating over what might be summed up as the “Books Are Special Snowflakes” argument, much loved among a class of patrician writers. For example, “Authors Guild” pitchman Richard Russo even demanded that Jeff Bezos take a pledge on the topic:

Amazon has never clearly and unequivocally stated (as traditional publishers have) that books are different and special, that they can’t be treated like the other commodities they sell. This doesn’t strike us as an oversight. If we’re wrong, Mr. Bezos, now would be a good time to correct us. First say it, then act like you believe it.

And founder of the reactionary group “Authors United” Douglas Preston puts it like this:

For [Amazon] to treat me as if I were a poster or computer cables or a TV set is really hurtful.

I have to admit, the Russovian Pledge notion feels weird and totalitarian to me (also hypocritical—does Russo have links to those “clear and unequivocal” traditional publisher statements, or did they come about in a more, shall we say, imaginative way?). And Preston’s hurt over apparently being confused with a TV set made me smile.

But then I realized: Amazon is giving books special treatment! After all, they’ve gone on selling Hachette’s books since February, when the Amazon/Hachette contract expired.

How special is that? Richard and Doug, do you think if Amazon can’t come to terms with the wholesaler of any other product (is it okay for me to call books “products”? You know what I mean), they’ll just go on selling it regardless? You think if they can’t work things out with the supplier of the Three Wolf Moon Tee Shirt, they’re going to keep that gorgeous example of apparel on their shelves? You think if the contract for Haribo Gummi Candy Gold-Bears (5-Pound Bag) expires, Amazon won’t immediately yank those bad boys (and save customers a hell of a wild gastrointestinal ride in the process)? And continuing to sell Tuscan Whole Milk (1 Gallon, 128 fl oz), without a contract? Fuggedaboudit!

But books? Totally different story. With books, you have a Hachette contract that’s been flat-lining for something like the last six months, and yet Amazon just keeps on performing CPR. No contract, yet the supplier’s wares are still available in the retailer’s store? Who else but a publisher receives heroic measures like these?

You see? If Amazon really did think books were just like hemorrhoid wipes and duct tape or even the AutoExec Wheelmate Steering Wheel Attachable Work Surface Tray, you wouldn’t expect them to try to discourage Hachette from contract-renewal-foot-dragging merely by removing a few preorder buttons. You would expect them to just take all those books Doug Preston claims are “hostages” and… well, free the hostages, so to speak.

But they don’t. I don’t know what to conclude from this other than that Jeff Bezos is mad for books. That he loves books, demonstrably loves them more than he loves anything else Amazon sells. Certainly that he loves books more than he’s irritated by all the crazy accusations about his lust for retaliation. Otherwise, he actually would retaliate, and drop any books for which a supplier won’t enter into a new contract. But instead, no matter what, he just won’t stop selling the damn things. If that’s not love, if that’s not “books are different and special and can’t be treated like other commodities”… I ask you, what is?

Well, there is one other possibility. Yes. One other.

It could be that Bezos is in fact secretly dying to treat books the way he’d treat any contract-expired hamster wheel… but he knows he can’t. There would be too much fallout and he wouldn’t be able to get away with it. So he has to keep selling those damn books—which to him are nothing more than interchangeable widgets!—even though his supplier won’t negotiate a new contract with him.

But if that’s the explanation—if Bezos wants to retaliate, but knows he can’t—well, then, it’s almost like… almost like Amazon doesn’t have quite the despotic market power its detractors constantly claim.

I can’t figure out which it is. If Bezos doesn’t especially love books, then he must not be all powerful. But if he is all powerful, he must especially love books.

Maybe that’s why Bezos won’t take the Russovian Pledge... he wants us to figure it out for ourselves?

Okay, okay, enough teasing Preston and Russo (though obviously I’m not being entirely facetious). Let me add in all seriousness something I hope we can all agree on: that anyone who decides to get into the book business—as a writer, editor, bookseller, whatever—probably didn’t do it for quite the same reasons that motivate someone to choose, say, a life of investment banking. We all love books, obviously. We all think they’re special. The problem is that Preston and Russo et al conflate this axiom with the dubious notion that therefore the optimal, and perhaps the only, way for books to be published and sold is the legacy route they’re accustomed to and from which they’ve personally benefited. Such a notion is without logical or empirical support and has more in common with theodicy, narcissism, and cargo cults than it does with rational thinking (see also my thoughts on Candide and the “All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds” mentality in this post on James Patterson’s own Norman Rockwellesque vision of publishing and bookselling).

So yes, books are special. But might it be unwise to get unduly emotionally attached to the notion that books are specially special? With regard to pricing, for example. As I discussed in an earlier post here:

There’s a widespread meme that high legacy prices create an opportunity for indie authors to sell their books for less. But there is another possibility I think is worth considering: that more readers would spend more money on all books overall if more individual books cost less.

To put it another way: if I had a choice between selling my books at $5.00 into a market where all other books were priced at $15.00, on the one hand, and selling my books at $5.00 into a market where all other books were priced at $5.00, on the other hand, I would prefer the second market because it would be so much bigger.

One other way of looking at it: among people who go into a bookstore thinking to buy one $20 hardback, and discover the store is having a three-for-the-price-of-two sale, how many wind up spending $40 and leaving with three books?

The point is, you can grow a market with low prices in such a way that individual sellers make more money in the bigger low-price market than they would have made undercutting prices in the smaller, high-priced market. When perceived value goes up, consumers spend more money. The market thereby grows, and individual sellers, even if the percentage of their slice of that market remains constant, make more money.

I’ve done no empirical studies on the book market and have only my own experience in the world (and my own pricing experiments with my own books) as a guide. So I could be wrong about the book market generally—but as a matter of logic, it seems a mistake to to treat as an axiom the assumption that lower across-the-board book prices must necessarily hurt indie authors’ bottom lines. After all, we know people hoard. But how much? For what products? And why?

In response, literary agent Ted Weinstein lampooned my argument like this:

If Amazon drives down the price of soap then everyone will take more showers and soap makers will make more money!

This got me thinking…

I liked the soap analogy, but felt it was missing something. And then I realized what it is: there’s pretty much only one way to get clean every day, and that way involves soap (maybe I’m not being creative enough, but still). So soap doesn’t face any external “cleanliness” competition.

Which raises an important question: do books face any external entertainment or information competition?

I would argue that, in general, books aren’t just competing against books, but also against other relatively fungible forms of entertainment and information. Amazon makes this point regularly, and I don’t think it gets enough attention. Because if it’s true that there’s a degree of fungibility in the minds of consumers between books, on the one hand, and other forms of information and entertainment, on the other, then the limiting factor on the growth of the book market isn’t just “people can’t read any more than they already do so they wouldn’t buy more books at any price.” The limiting factor might also have to do with pricing, with high prices bleeding off potential buyers into other entertainment venues where they believe they get better value.

I don’t know the answer, but I find the question extremely interesting, and it would be cool if someone could supply some real-word data. For now, the only such data I’m aware of comes from Amazon and Author Earnings. But I’d love to see more.

Anyway. I’m hoping the Russo/Patterson/Preston crowd will recognize, if only privately and grudgingly, that Jeff Bezos really does seem to recognize books are special. I also hope they’ll ponder the possibility that some significant segment of the marketplace might not entirely agree. Because if a significant number of consumers finds anything at all about books interchangeable with other forms of information and entertainment,  the consumers in question might decide they get better value for their information and entertainment dollar elsewhere. In which case, a dogmatic devotion to high book prices might be shrinking the market for books generally. For anyone who feels books have a special place in culture and society, that would seem a shame.