Comments on: [publishing] Amazon and the price of silence

By: hellequin_jack

hellequin_jack — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:54:57 +0000

See my post above.
I blame the same thought line.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:28:03 +0000

They’re certainly winning that part of the PR war, yes. I suspect the reason is that the only consumer-facing comment from either company has been the note on the Kindle board. That’s a straight lift from Amazon’s statement, and lazy reporting not to find out the Macmillan side.

By: Anthea

Anthea — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:20:42 +0000

Have you noticed that all of the news articles about this issue spin it to make Amazon look good? In particular, I don’t think I’ve read one news article (as opposed to blog post) that doesn’t misrepresent Macmillan’s pricing scheme as “raising prices from $9.99 to $12.99-14.99.” Not one of them has mentioned the lower price point.

Seems fishy to me…

By: Aimee

Aimee — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:58:07 +0000

So they’re just “reg’ler folks” trying to protect customers from the Big Bad, huh. Considering how few news pieces even mention the full price *range* Macmillan is proposing, they’re obviously getting somewhere with this tactic.

Of course, I know few people who are willing to shop at Walmart anymore. And yet, they succeed over and over. Argh.

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:56:54 +0000

Thank you, Karen.

By: Karen Wester Newton

Karen Wester Newton — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:55:18 +0000

What really scares me is, what if it’s taking so long to put the links back because the Amazon folks don’t know what they’re doing?

Also, I have to say you deserve some kind of medal for keeping your cool and maintaining a civilized tone with some folks who don’t seem to care that they’re conversing with a person whose income has been hijacked by a corporate decision beyond his control.

By: hellequin_jack

hellequin_jack — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:41:16 +0000

One thought occurred to me this morning. I am wondering how much of people’s reactions to this debacle are a result of the WalMartization of America.

One of the reasons WalMart has been successful is that they have leveraged their distribution and logistics channels to put the screws to suppliers. WalMart names the price they will sell something at and is willing to walk away from a supplier who doesn’t play ball.

In several cases this has lead to the destruction of suppliers. Rubbermaid is a perfect example. WalMart shut down their relationship with Rubbermaid and ended a decade long partnership. They replaced the products with cheaper, less quality products.

WalMart has consistently won a major part of the PR campaign. They may be tared and feathered as job killing, small town pillaging, overseas relocating pariahs, but when the chips are down they have successfully managed to get the American public to distrust Suppliers & Manufacturers. To the point that some of their PR comes off as “Yeah, we are bad, but these other guys (suppliers) are worse.”

This view of Suppliers-as-wantabe-price-gougers and big box/big channel Distributors/Retail vendors as the moderator of Suppliers nefarious schemes is rather common amongst the American Public.

I find myself wondering if Amazon in an exceptionally poorly executed fashion is attempting to be the WalMart to Macmillan’s Supplier. The meme that they would be trying to tap into is expressing itself strongly in the Pro-Amazon Camp.

By: Aimee

Aimee — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:37:20 +0000

It is almost as if Amazon is floundering in internal meetings where no one is willing to make a decision – or maybe just ignoring the entire issue while assuming that the company is big enough to sail through on brute strength. Both prospects are hard to credit, but I can’t even come up with a *good* reason for them to be silent for so long.