Amazon proposal to Hachette "like a mugger wanting praise for donating stolen goods to a charity."

Amazon proposal to Hachette "like a mugger wanting praise for donating stolen goods to a charity."

Jul 09 2014

Summarized from Shelf Awareness....

It seems a bit like a mugger wanting praise for donating stolen goods to a charity.

In a new twist to the Amazon-Hachette dispute, David Naggar, Amazon's v-p of Kindle content and independent publishing has proposed that Hachette authors "would get 100% of the sales price of every Hachette e-book we sell. Both Amazon and Hachette would forgo all revenue and profit from the sale of every e-book until an agreement is reached."

Douglas Preston, who drafted an open letter--signed by a number of bestselling authors--last week calling on Amazon to resolve the dispute, told the Wall Street Journal the new proposal would be "devastating" to Hachette while "barely hurting Amazon at all." He also objected to the proposal because Hachette has supported him throughout his career: "There's something wrong with this. My publisher gave me a very large advance for the book they are about to publish. Morally, I would have to turn over that [Amazon] money to them."

"We made an offer in April that was the largest we ever made to any retailer, and in May made another that was higher still," said a Hachette spokeswoman. "Both offers were rejected."

In the New York Times, Authors Guild president Robinson said if Amazon "wants to have a constructive conversation about this, we're ready to have one at any time. But this seems like a short-term solution that encourages authors to take sides against their publishers. It doesn't get authors out of the middle of this--we're still in the middle. Our books are at the center of this struggle."

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