Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Amazon? Antitrust? Never! (insert sarcasm here)

As many of you know, crazy lady has been keeping an eye on the latest round of battles between authors, publishers and Amazon. There has been some impact to her books-- buttons were removed in France and the UK-- with print-on-demand changes that impact her business. Here are some overviews of the issue:

(1) most recent NY TIMES article
(2) lawsuit
(3) original publisher's weekly article

Well, Amazon has responded to the lawsuit, and it has been a busy couple of days for crazy lady. She sits on an advisory committee for women horror writers, and received the following email from Richard at BookLocker, the folks who filed the original lawsuit:

" Just wanted to let you know that we've released PDFs of Amazon's motion to dismiss and BookLocker's response to that motion. The federal judge will use these filings to make a determination as to if the lawsuit should proceed to trial or be thrown out. I'm posting the links here in case anyone is interested in diving deeper into the arguments of the lawsuit.

BookLocker's response

Amazon's Motion to Dismiss

Crazy lady has accomplished "zero, zippo, nada" today because of worried calls from small publishers, academics and writers impacted by Amazon's tactics. While there is no official boycott, crazy lady is suggesting that people shift to Powell's Books or Zubal's or something local to your community. It's hard. Amazon is cheap & convenient. It's too bad that Amazon has turned against the writers and publishers that gave it a boost in the early days.

Ah yes. Capitalism at its best & worst.

p.s. Some folks have asked "what else can we do?" There is an online petition sponsored by the Small Press association. They also have a web page dedicated to 5 things you can do, to help.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad you and Sugar loved the video - I'm so happy you posted it so others can see it too.
I will cease to buy books through Amazon as of right now and I've bought 15 already this year. This is antitrust and monopoly power and there's nothing good about letting it continue. My little boycott probably won't hurt them any, but it will make me feel better.