How Amazon's bid to bury Hachette has backfired

Amazon's suggestion that the ebook and paperback revolutions are comparable has sparked scorn, satire and indigationWhen Amazon published their rather extraordinary "Message from the Amazon Books Team" at readersunited.com last week, they got a few things right and a few things wrong. Alongside a realistic analysis of ebook pricing and a rather aggressive plea to bombard the CEO of Hachette with threatening emails, the letter noted that "Just ahead of World War II, there was a radical invention that shook the foundations of book publishing". This was the paperback, and apparently it was opposed by publishers who "dug in and circled the wagons". Which is a bit odd, as the person most widely credited with the popularisation of the paperback (but not its invention) was Allen Lane, who, as founder of Penguin Books, introduced paperback classics to the British public.Amazon's other bizarre decision, alongside the somewhat unnecessary second world war reference, was to quote George Orwell selectively on the subject and accuse him of "collusion". In fact, Orwell was making a sarcastic dig in favour of the paperback, and Amazon has been accused of doublespeak by the Orwell estate. The parody page booksunited.org, created by online writer Dan Hon in the voice of the books themselves, smartly notes that "We are not fighting for our existence. We know that as long as you humans exist, you will write, and you will read." Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2014-08-24 00:00:00 UTC ]

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Why Books Matter for the Long Run

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[ Knowledge@Wharton | 2018-12-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A Public Space Branches Into Book Publishing

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Michelle Obama Tells Jimmy Kimmel About Her New Book Becoming

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[ Slate | 2018-11-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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BISG Explores Promise, Reality of Blockchain Technology

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Hodder & Stoughton Marks 150 Years in Book Publishing

At 150 and now owned by Hachette, the UK's Hodder & Stoughton has a huge list of hits to its name and was ahead of the Penguin paperback revolution with pocket-size hardcovers in the 1920s. The post Hodder & Stoughton Marks 150 Years in Book Publishing appeared first on Publishing... Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives

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Fuel powers ahead in documenting the overlooked art behind the Iron Curtain

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Global Publishing Leaders 2018: HarperCollins

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Allen Lane and YUP bag double Wolfson History Prize shortlistings

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YouTube Boosts the ISNI Identifier: Creators Standing Out From the Crowd

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