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What’s in one’s own image (right)?

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From The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice:

In Western culture, one of the earliest myths dealing with what would subsequently become a literary topos is the one concerning Narcissus. Narcissus was known for both his great beauty and the disdain he showed to those who loved him. In the version of the myth as told by Ovid, Narcissus’s behaviour (particularly towards Echo) prompted Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, to punish him by luring him to a pool. There, Narcissus saw his own image reflected in the water and fell in love with it, without realizing that it was just his own reflection. Unable to fulfil his love, Narcissus eventually melted away from the fire of passion burning inside him.

If we now move away from the realm of myth to that of law, a similar feeling—of attraction and yet unfulfillment—seems to be present when we review the type of legal protection available to one’s own image. In particular, it seems that this feeling is experienced where no self-standing image rights protection is available. In countries of this kind, in fact, different tools can be employed to repress unauthorized third-party uses of one’s own likeness, image, distinctive features, etc. Yet, none of them – even when combined together – seems to allow achieving the same results (and with the same apparent simplicity) that, instead, image rights as (predominantly) an expression of one’s own personality and identity provide.

The contributions that we host in this first special image rights issue move from, indeed, the attractiveness of the idea that the law should protect against the misappropriation and misuse of one’s own image. Yet, they also share a sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo. 

. . . .

Any change, however, would need to be made, first, in a context in which several conflicting rights and interests are at issue, including third-party artistic and commercial freedom of expression (so that any intervention would need to be ‘surgical’ in both scope and objective). Second, as the articles on, e.g. deepfakes and revenge porn show, any such change would require considerations of different areas of the law and doctrines, as well as fast-paced technological developments. In a field, that of image rights, which puzzlingly remains substantially unharmonized at the international and EU levels, the challenges that, in particular, the latter pose show the need for effective enforcement tools and responses that, due to the very nature of such challenges, will also likely need to be increasingly transnational.Our contributions allow us to travel from the United Kingdom to California, to consider EU, US and Russian laws, to appreciate the interplay between technological, public policy and legal issues, to review image rights in relation to street photography, sexual images and deepfakes.

. . . .

[Analysis of a decision by an Italian court]

The Court of First Instance of Turin held that Audrey Hepburn’s image rights had been violated due to the unauthorized use and exploitation of her likeness for commercial purposes.

. . . .

The judgment considers the two fundamental provisions concerning image rights: Article 10 of the Civil Code and Article 96 of Law No 633/1941 (the Italian Copyright Act). The former protects image rights by solely describing the behaviour prohibited by law, yet without positively defining the concept of image or image right. In fact, the provision laconically states that ‘if the image of a person or his/her parents, spouse or children has been exhibited or published outside of the cases in which said exhibit or publication is allowed by law or [it has been exhibited or published] with prejudice to the decorum or reputation of the person himself or of the aforementioned parties, at the request of the interested party the judicial authority may order that the abuse is ceased, save for compensation for damages’(author’s own translation).

. . . .

It follows that the consent of the right holder is essential for the use of one’s own image or likeness, unless one of the exceptions provided by Article 97 applies. Notably, consent is not required ‘when the reproduction of the image [of a person] is justified by the notoriety or the public office covered by said person, by necessity of law and order, by scientific, educational or cultural purposes, or when the reproduction is connected to facts, events, and ceremonies of public interest or held in public. However, the portrait cannot be exhibited or put on the market if its exhibition or marketing causes prejudice to the honour, reputation or the decorum of the person portrayed’

. . . .

Luca Dotti and Sean Ferrer Hepburn are the sons of famous Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn. They brought proceedings . . . against Italian corporation 2223 S.A.S. di MB Management & Entertainment S.R.L. (the Defendant), for the unauthorized use of their mother’s likeness.

The Defendant had produced and commercialized nine types of t-shirts representing just as many images portraying the likeness of Ms Hepburn. More specifically, the t-shirts carried the likeness of a woman wearing a sumptuous black dress, a diamond necklace and a tiara in her hair, together with big dark sunglasses and a cigarette with a mouthpiece. All these elements stood to recall, to the general viewer, the character of the young and elegant Holly Golightly in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’, played by Hepburn. Other images represented the likeness of the actress under a more ‘modern’ angle, by showing her covered in tattoos, or chewing a big bubble gum, or doing a vulgar gesture with her middle finger.

This unrealistic and inelegant interpretation of their mother’s likeness was considered by the Claimants as detrimental to her reputation and honour. Therefore, they sought a declaration of infringement of her image rights as well as compensation of damages, both for profit loss and the weakening of the commercial value of Hepburn’s image, as well as for the moral prejudice to her reputation.

In response, the Defendant argued that the images at hand did not consist of a mechanical representation of the likeness of the actress but, rather, a new, different, original work, which could not in itself be considered a violation. The intent was not that of devaluing the likeness of the actress or her reputation, but rather revisiting the female image through an empowering representation. Furthermore, it claimed to have lawfully used the image since the interested person was a well-known public figure so that the use would fall under the exceptions in Article 97 of the Italian Copyright Act.

. . . .

The Turin court reaffirmed the approach of earlier Italian case law, also recalling that the public interest defence, which is to be applied strictly . . . ‘does not apply where images taken from a film are published and the publication takes place in a context other than that of the cinematographic work and its marketing’.

. . . .

Having ruled out the applicability of Article 97(1), the court considered Article 97(2) applicable instead. This provision states that, even where lack of consent could be disregarded due to exceptional circumstances, the use of one’s own image is still prohibited when the use is detrimental to the honour, reputation or dignity of the person portrayed . . . . Since the images on the t-shirts portrayed the likeness of Ms Hepburn with disregard to her real appearance and her elegance, the court found that the use at hand caused a prejudice to her reputation and dignity.

Link to the rest at The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (multiple citations to statutes, cases, etc., omitted for the benefit of non-legal readers)

PG suggests that, as a general proposition, indie authors should avoid using the images of famous people (even if deceased) on book covers, promotions, etc., unless they have been dead for a long time – Ms. Hepburn died on January 20, 1993.

If an indie author is publishing a book across a variety of different national borders via Amazon, even if the use of an image might pass muster under US law, the laws of other nations might give rise to claims for damages.

PG further suggests that if someone plans to sue an author for misusing an image for a self-published book, it is quite likely that this person/entity would also sue Amazon in the same proceeding.

Amazon’s involvement would trigger Paragraph 5.8 of KDP’s Terms and Conditions which reads as follows (Highlights are PG’s. He has also separated out some of the sub-parts of the original legalese into subparagraphs for ease of reading):

5.8 Representations, Warranties and Indemnities. You represent and warrant that:

(a) you have the full right, power and authority to enter into and fully perform this Agreement and will comply with the terms of this Agreement;

(b) prior to you or your designee’s delivery of any content, you will have obtained all rights that are necessary for the exercise the rights granted under this Agreement;

(c) neither the exercise of the rights authorized under this Agreement nor any materials embodied in the content nor its sale or distribution as authorized in this Agreement will violate or infringe upon the intellectual property, proprietary or other rights of any person or entity, including, without limitation, contractual rights, copyrights, trademarks, common law rights, rights of publicity, or privacy, or moral rights, or contain defamatory material or violate any laws or regulations of any jurisdiction;

(d) you will ensure that all Books delivered under the Program comply with the technical delivery specifications provided by us; (e) you will be solely responsible for accounting and paying any co-owners or co-administrators of any Book or portion thereof any royalties with respect to the uses of the content and their respective shares, if any, of any monies payable under this Agreement; and (f) you will not attempt to exploit the KDP service or any other Amazon program or service.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, you will indemnify, defend and hold Amazon, its officers, directors, employees, affiliates, subcontractors and assigns harmless from and against any loss, claim, liability, damage, action or cause of action (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) that arises from any breach of your representations, warranties or obligations set forth in this Agreement. We will be entitled, at our expense, to participate in the defense and settlement of the claim or action with counsel of our own choosing.

PG notes that that, in the event that someone felt an author had violated her/his image or publicity rights and was considering a lawsuit, author Jane Jones of Tincup, Montana, might not make a particularly attractive defendant from whom to collect a large amount of money.

However, Ms. Jones and Amazon combined would have the means to pay a very large judgment if the complaining party was successful in a lawsuit pursued jointly against both of them.

Looking deeper into the Goodreads troll problem

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From Camestros Felapton:

The repeated spamming of Patrick S Tomlinson’s unpublished book with fake reviews continues on Goodreads [see earlier post]. Looking at the long list of reviews (currently 124 ratings) it is clear that some have been removed, presumably after being flagged by multiple people. However, with the trolls targetting the book easily generating new accounts the net number of fake reviews continues to grow.

Current authors whose names have been stolen for fake reviews include:

  • Chuck Wendig
  • Gareth Powell
  • Beth Cato
  • Cat Rambo (and her deceased father)
  • Patrick Tomlinson himself
  • Will Tate
  • Monica Valentinelli
  • Marshall Ryan Maresca
  • Mary Robinette Kowal
  • Tobias S Buckell
  • Sarah Pinkser
  • Elizabeth May

This kind of coordinated pre-emptive spamming of negative reviews isn’t new. The film-rating site Rotten Tomatoes had to take steps last year to curtail a right-wing attack on the as-the-time unreleased Captain Marvel.

. . . .

Preventing reviews of unreleased properties seems like a minimum first step in limiting the capacity of coordinated campaigns to hijack a review site. While it won’t prevent other coordinated attacks on released books, unreleased (but listed) works are more vulnerable as they have no natural reviews being written.

The identity theft aspect of these specific attacks is also a great concern. The overt and blatant aspect of the impersonations makes it unlikely that people would be easily tricked into thinking the accounts are genuine. However, the extent of them and how easily the trolls have generated multiple accounts using real identities, demonstrates that Goodreads is open to more subtle mischief and identity theft.

The source of the attacks is from members of a disbanded subreddit that have been engaged in a sustained harassment campaign against Tomlinson since 2018. Tomlinson himself has a longer explanation that documents the harassment in other venues: https://www.patrickstomlinson.com/2018/09/29/how-trolls-hack-twitter-to-silence-us/

The existence of a documented online harassment campaign really should be enough for a major website to take added measures. For example, Wikipedia limits the capacity of people to edit pages (particularly biographies of living persons) when there is repeated vandalism or disputed content. A temporary block on reviews on a Goodreads entry would be a wise measure to have available in the event of an alleged spam attack. Notably, a book receiving large numbers of reviews from accounts that are both new and which have made only one review should be an obvious red-flag.

. . . .

Actions that undermine reader’s ability to trust reviews and which undermine the capacity of authors to identify themselves manifestly undermine the basic aspects of Goodreads model as a service. This makes the difficulty the site is having dealing with this specific issue surprising. The ease with which a troll campaign can brazenly manipulate the site, strongly implies that a less overt campaign can manipulate ratings or spread disinformation unnoticed.

Link to the rest at Camestros Felapton

OverDrive Reports Record Digital Borrowing in 2019

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From Publishers Weekly:

Public libraries around the world generated a record level of digital content circulation in 2019, providing patrons access to more than 326 million e-books, audiobooks and digital magazines, a 20% increase over the previous year, according to a report by Rakuten OverDrive, a digital distribution vendor for libraries

According to the report, 73 public library systems in five countries each loaned over 1 million digital books over the past year, including eight systems that hit the million loans mark for the first time. Among the top digital library lending systems are the Toronto Public Library (6.6 million digital loans), Los Angeles Public Library (the top U.S. library with 5.9 million digital loans); and the National Library Board of Singapore (the top lender outside of North America with 4.2 million loans).

According to the OverDrive report, the increase in digital borrowing represents the “library’s role as a valued discovery channel” for publishers and authors. Nevertheless, the OverDrive report on digital lending comes in the wake of continuing concerns by publishers that digital borrowing may undermine book sales. These concerns have led to a continuing dispute between publishers and libraries over efforts by some publishers to restrict the ability of libraries to offer digital access to their titles.

According to the OverDrive data, the number of e-books borrowed rose 15% in the year to 211 million; digital audiobooks borrowed jumped 30%, to 114 million, and 59 million children’s/young adult checkouts took place, a gain of 27% over 2018.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

PG thought publishers’ concerns about consumers borrowing physical titles from the library instead of buying them at bookstores had been resolved a long time ago. If lending libraries and the consumer behavior they enable were dangerous or fatal to publishers and physical bookstores, such damage would have manifested itself long ago.

If it makes sense for publishers to sell physical books to libraries with the understanding that the library is going to lend the book and the publisher will receive no incremental income from such loans, nothing about ebooks should really change the underlying business considerations. With the specialized software the library uses to lend a copy of an ebook and delete it from the reader’s device at the end of the loan, the likelihood that ebooks lent through the library are going to be pirated is lower than those sold (licensed) through Amazon where no such automatic deletion function is built into the ebook management system (at least to PG’s knowledge).

Here’s an excerpt from the help file of Libby, a popular (the most popular?) lending software used in the United States:

Books are automatically returned to the library on their due date. When they’re returned, they’re also removed from your Loans and deleted from your device (if downloaded).

PG has noted before that on a scale of most to least sophisticated marketers and advertisers, traditional publishers are at the bottom, just below used car lots and payday lenders.

Why?

Free samples are a long-time staple of advertising and promotion campaigns for a variety of products.

Perhaps there are physical bookstores that do not allow visitors to leaf through and read parts of books as part of the shopping process, but PG is not aware of their existence. Such consumer behavior is sampling. Amazon permits the same behavior in its bookstore. No one expects that everyone who samples a product will purchase it.

If sampling was not a reliable method of increasing sales, PG expects retail establishments would end the practice.

If a reader borrows an ebook from a library by an author she hasn’t read before, from the reader’s perspective, that’s another form of sampling. (In this case, the publisher receives some compensation from the library for licensing the book in the first place.)

If this instance of book sampling is successful and the reader enjoys the book, then returns it to the library and looks for the next book in the series or another book by the same author and finds a two-month waiting list to borrow that next book, the reader is only a few clicks away from buying the next ebook by that author on Amazon and starting to read it in a couple of minutes. The reader may even purchase a printed version of the book she has borrowed and enjoyed for her own physical library, sign up for the author’s and/or publisher’s email list, etc.

Discovering a great new author and buying other books written by that author is a far more frictionless process with ebooks than it is with physical books. Going to a physical bookstore to buy that book requires transporting oneself to that store, hoping the store stocks the book, etc., etc. Buying a physical copy of the book from Amazon involves a wait of at least one or two days.

The incremental cost of goods for the publisher in creating, storing, transporting, etc., a copy of the second ebook is probably zero. The same costs for a physical book are definitely more than zero.

A sophisticated seller would be overjoyed to sell products with no incremental costs of producing and transporting those products instead of dealing with the costs and friction involved in selling physical products. Bill Gates, Microsoft and a lot of other people and business organizations have become extremely wealthy from selling organized collections of electrons.

Indie Means Indie

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From Fiction Notes:

Smashwords’ Mark Coker is sounding the alarm about indie publishers (those who write and publish their own works—let’s get the terminology right–it’s INDIE publishers, not the deprecating “self-published”) relying too much on Amazon.

I agree with Coker.

Two and half years ago, I started advertising on Amazon’s AMS platform. It doubled my sales. But then, everyone else found the platform and the cost of advertising has sky-rocketed. I get it. There’s competition, as there should be. But what I don’t get is that the platform is confusing, frustrating, and most of all, inconsistent. You may advertise using Keyword A and get fantastic results. If you try to duplicate that with a similar title, say the second in a series, however, you’ll probably get zilch. Nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. There’s no consistency. That’s a simple example, but the inconsistency extends throughout the platform.

I’ve been a member of a Facebook group devoted to figuring out Amazon’s algorithms and advertising policies for about those same two and a half years. In that time, no one can consistently figure out, well, anything. Theories abound. I’ve tried them all.

. . . .

So. A couple weeks ago, I set a bid at a high level of $0.83. Except, I accidentally set it at $83.00 instead. Fortunately, I monitor the ads closely and caught it within 24 hours. Here’s the thing: it sold books. The ad served, and there were sales. Of course, at the high bid (it charged me about $4-5/bid), I wasn’t profitable. But everything else was right on. I know my audience; they like my book; the keywords were solid; and, conversion rates were solid which means the cover/description were doing their job. It’s just that Amazon won’t serve my ads without crazy-high pricing. For whatever reason, Amazon’s algorithm deprecates my title and won’t serve the ads.

I remember going to writer’s conferences and being put off by how people treat editors. Speaking was a baby editor—a fresh-out-of-college-20-something, the only type person who can afford to live on an assistant editor’s salary. She was smart and intelligent, but not experienced. Her opinions on literature were still forming, guided by her senior editors and realities of the marketplace. I cringed at how people treated her, as if she were a princess who, with her magic publishing wand, could change their lives forever.

Link to the rest at Fiction Notes and thanks to Darcy for the tip. Here’s a link to Darcy’s indie publishing site.

Indie booksellers create community to survive the age of Amazon

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From MPR News:

The seeds for the Zenith Bookstore, which opened in Duluth 2 1/2 years ago, were sown on the streets of Manhattan.

“We used to love walking the streets and visiting bookstores — we’re both big readers,” said Bob Dobrow, who together with his wife, Angel, owns the cozy bookstore on the city’s Central Avenue.

“We were young and in love and full of energy, and we would walk for hours,” recalled Angel Dobrow.

The Dobrows recall casually musing to one another, “Wouldn’t it be fun one day to open a bookstore?”

But they got married and had kids. Bob became a math professor at Carleton College and they moved to Northfield, Minn. When he retired a few years ago, they were packing up boxes and boxes of books, and that idea popped into their heads again.

“It was literally like a bolt of lightning,” Bob Dobrow said.

Never mind that they had never owned any kind of business before, or that people had been predicting the death of small bookstores since Barnes & Noble, Amazon and e-books.

But they moved north to Duluth, depleted their savings to remodel an old liquor store and opened for business on a summer day in 2017.

. . . .

Sales have grown about 60 percent since that first year, he said. The Dobrows attribute that in part to a loyal customer base that is willing to spend a little more on a book to support a local business.

“One of my great fears was that bookstores would go away, so I feel almost a moral obligation to be in bookstores,” said Chris Johnson, an education professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth who stopped by last week to pick up some books for his college-age kids.

“It’s probably not the norm, but I think it’s important to book lovers that such places exist,” he added.

Since bottoming out in 2009, the number of independent booksellers nationwide has grown by about 35 percent. There are now more than 1,900 independent booksellers across the country, who together operate more than 2,500 stores.

. . . .

First, there’s the Buy Local movement, which he said indie bookstores helped create.

“Booksellers are deeply embedded in helping to define this notion of why the consumer should shop local,” he explained.

Then there’s what Raffaelli calls “curation.”

“If you see a great bookseller at his or her craft, you’ll see them ask questions like, ‘What are the last five books that you read?’ And then they’ll steer a reader into a genre potentially that is outside [what they’d normally read],” he said. “But they say, ‘This is your next great book.’”

That expertise and experience enables booksellers to compete against the algorithms Amazon uses to recommend books, he said.

. . . .

And then there’s this: Many bookstores have made themselves much more than just booksellers. They’re also community gathering places.

. . . .

“It’s a business with razor-thin profits,” said Dan Cullen, senior strategy officer with the American Booksellers Association. “I don’t want to be a Pollyanna because on the one hand, there’s been solid success. But on the other hand, it’s a challenging road ahead of them as well.”

He said many bookstores face escalating rents and struggle to pay living wages and benefits to their employees.

Link to the rest at MPR News and thanks to Nate for the tip.

PG notes that, if you’ve ever been in Duluth in the winter as he has, you’ll understand why people would be attracted to any place that’s warm.

That said, PG is pleased that The Dobrows have made their bookstore work and hope they can continue to do so.

Speaking of winter, PG just checked and the average low temperature in Duluth in January is 4 degrees Fahrenheit and the city receives about 70 inches of snow per year. Since it is located on the shores of Lake Superior, bracing winds are also a feature of Duluth winters.

One additional feature of Minnesota winters that will not be familiar to most Floridians is that virtually every car and truck you see has an electric cord hanging out of the grill. The cord leads to an engine block heater which is plugged in every night to make sure various liquids in the engine don’t freeze (radiators) or transform into a thick viscous mess (oil) overnight.

OTOH, PG understands that these weather conditions don’t sound very impressive to TPV regulars who live in Canada.

The 2010s were supposed to bring the ebook revolution. It never quite came.

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PG’s last post on December 24 was about the following Vox article that purported to talk about what a bust ebooks have turned out to be.

If you missed it in the holiday rush, there were some good comments and, yes, it is a Vox article, so you can assume the author was born yesterday.

From Vox:

At the beginning of the 2010s, the world seemed to be poised for an ebook revolution.

The Amazon Kindle, which was introduced in 2007, effectively mainstreamed ebooks. By 2010, it was clear that ebooks weren’t just a passing fad, but were here to stay. They appeared poised to disrupt the publishing industry on a fundamental level. Analysts confidently predicted that millennials would embrace ebooks with open arms and abandon print books, that ebook sales would keep rising to take up more and more market share, that the price of ebooks would continue to fall, and that publishing would be forever changed.

Instead, at the other end of the decade, ebook sales seem to have stabilized at around 20 percent of total book sales, with print sales making up the remaining 80 percent. “Five or 10 years ago,” says Andrew Albanese, a senior writer at trade magazine Publishers Weekly and the author of The Battle of $9.99, “you would have thought those numbers would have been reversed.”

And in part, Albanese tells Vox in a phone interview, that’s because the digital natives of Gen Z and the millennial generation have very little interest in buying ebooks. “They’re glued to their phones, they love social media, but when it comes to reading a book, they want John Green in print,” he says. The people who are actually buying ebooks? Mostly boomers. “Older readers are glued to their e-readers,” says Albanese. “They don’t have to go to the bookstore. They can make the font bigger. It’s convenient.”

Ebooks aren’t only selling less than everyone predicted they would at the beginning of the decade. They also cost more than everyone predicted they would — and consistently, they cost more than their print equivalents.

. . . .

When the Kindle entered the marketplace in 2007, Amazon had a simple sales pitch: Anyone with a Kindle could buy all the ebooks they wanted through the online marketplace, and many of those ebooks — in fact, all New York Times best-sellers — would cost no more than $9.99.

$9.99 is a steal for a new book. At the time, most hardcovers were averaging a list price of about $26, and many cost more. But for Amazon, this price point was an apparent no-brainer. The first generation Kindle was expensive, and value conscious customers needed some incentive to buy into it. Why would anyone spend $399 on an e-reader if they couldn’t expect to make up at least part of the cost in a discount on ebooks?

And while this point is often glossed over, Amazon was actually following a precedent set by publishers in its pricing model. In her opinion for US v. Apple, Judge Denise Cote noted that before 2009, most publishers discounted ebooks by 20 percent from the price of a hardcover, which often led to a suggested list price of around $9.99.

But by 2009, publishers had changed their minds. Now they considered the idea of $9.99 ebooks to be an existential threat. Printing and binding and shipping — the costs that ebooks eliminated — accounted for only two dollars of the cost of a hardcover, publishers argued. So the ebook for a $20 hardcover book should cost no less than $18. And according to publishers, by setting the price of an ebook at $9.99, Amazon was training readers to undervalue books.

. . . .

Before we delve further into the weeds here, a quick primer on how book prices are set. Print books are generally sold under a wholesale model, which works like this: First, the publisher will set a suggested list price for a book; say, $20. Then it will sell the book to resellers and distributors for a discount off that suggested list price. So if Simon & Schuster wants to sell a $20 book to Amazon, Amazon might negotiate a discount of 40 percent for itself and end up paying Simon & Schuster only $12 for that book.

But once Amazon owns the book, it has the right to set whatever price it would like for consumers. The $20 list price that Simon & Schuster set was just a suggestion. Under the wholesale model, Amazon is free to decide to sell the book to readers for as little as a single dollar if it chooses to.

Until 2010, ebooks were sold through the wholesale model too. So if Simon & Schuster was publishing a $20 hardcover, they could choose to set a suggested list price of $18 for the ebook — two dollars less than the hardcover — and then sell that ebook to Amazon at a 40 percent discount for $10.80. And Amazon could, in turn, feel free to sell that ebook for $9.99 and swallow a loss of 81 cents.

To be clear, the numbers we’re using here to get a handle on how pricing works are imaginary. (Amazon negotiates different discounts for itself at different times from different publishers, sometimes around 40 percent, but at other times higher and at other times lower.) But we do know that Amazon was making very, very little money off ebook sales in 2010, and was in fact probably losing money on most of them.

. . . .

“Amazon can still discount whatever they like on the print side,” explains Jane Friedman, a publishing consultant and the author of The Business of Being a Writer. On the ebook side, however, Amazon now lists publisher-mandated prices, often with the petulant italic addition “Price set by seller.” “So the market is very weird, and often the ebook costs more than the print,” Friedman says. “Sometimes it feels like Amazon is trying to make the publishers look ridiculous.”

And because ebooks are often more expensive than Amazon’s heavily discounted print books, traditional publishing’s ebook sales seem to have fallen off — and Amazon is more dominant than ever in the print book market. “It’s so much cheaper,” says Friedman.

In this new market, high ebook prices make it harder than ever for young authors in particular to survive. “The split has really hurt debut novelists,” says Friedman. “It’s hard to ask readers to take a chance on someone unproven at that high price point, and since the ebook market does lean towards fiction, it’s hurting the new people.”

Self-published authors, meanwhile, are flourishing. They’re allowed to set their own ebook prices just like publishers are — and consistently, they set their prices very, very low. “It’s a shadow market,” Friedman says. “Novelists with huge backlists go and put them out as ebooks independently. And if a reader has a choice between reading this great series at $2.99 a pop or a $12 novel, what are they going to pick?”

Antitrust law professor Christopher Sagers argues that the outcome of the DOJ’sebooks case shows that the real problem with the industry is not just that Amazon has a monopoly. The big trade publishers, he says, have a monopoly too.

“There used to be hundreds of publishing companies. They’re now mostly owned by five,” Sagers says. (After that Department of Justice lawsuit, Penguin merged with Random House, and the Big Six became the Big Five.) “Why are ebooks expensive? It’s not because Amazon is vicious. It’s because there’s no competition at the wholesale level.”

. . . .

The Big Five publishers “are huge, and they have been able to put in place practices that are kind of unfair and that authors have to put up with,” Friedman allows. “That said, they need that kind of size to be able to effectively deal with something like Amazon. If you look at an indie publisher, I wouldn’t want to be one of them.”

Link to the rest at Vox and thanks to DM for the tip.

PG notes that the OP devotes one paragraph to independent authors and that paragraph implies that indie authors are primarily publishing their revered backlist titles.

Unlike Big Publishing, nobody is really beating any publicity drums for indie authors.

One other point the OP doesn’t discuss is that Barnes & Noble is still cratering and, when it finally goes down the drain, retail bookselling via physical bookstores will take a huge hit and publishers who have failed to develop their chops selling ebooks and encouraging readers to buy them will regret that their profitability will take an enormous hit.

Audible Appoints New CEO

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From Publishers Weekly:

Audible founder Don Katz will turn over the position of CEO to former IDG and Dun & Bradstreet executive Bob Carrigan on January 2. Carrigan will assume day-to-day operations for Audible’s global operations, while Katz will transition to executive chairman.

. . . .

Katz founded Audible in 1995 and sold it to Amazon in 2008. In his new role as executive chairman, he will work closely with Carrigan on overarching strategies, while also focusing on Audible’s global content strategy and social and public policy objectives in Newark, where Audible is based, as well as at other company locations.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly and thanks to Jan for the tip.

Billions of items ordered worldwide this holiday season

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From Amazon:

This holiday season was record breaking for Amazon, thanks to customers around the world who purchased billions of items, including tens of millions of Amazon devices. Some of the best-selling products and brands this holiday season were the Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, Echo Show 5, L.O.L. Surprise! Glitter Globe Doll Winter Disco Series with Glitter Hair, iRobot Roomba 675 Robot Vacuum, HAUS LABORATORIES, Carhartt, AmazonBasics, and Champion items. Popular departments customers shopped in Amazon’s Stores in the U.S. were toys, fashion, home, and beauty with more than half a billion total items ordered.

. . . .

  • This holiday season Amazon added more than 250,000 full and part-time seasonal roles across its global customer fulfillment network, with the company now employing 750,000 employees worldwide.
  • Nearly 19,000 employees worldwide across Amazon’s Operations team were promoted this year.
  • Amazon has 150 delivery stations in the United States that employ more than 90,000 Amazon Logistics associates.

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  • Customers asked Alexa for recipes and cooking advice tens of millions of times this holiday season as Alexa helped make holiday feasts, cookies, and cocktails. Some of the most popular recipes this holiday season included Thanksgiving Turkey, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Fluffy Mashed Potatoes.
  • Customers received hundreds of millions of doorbell and motion announcements via Alexa this holiday season from carolers to delivery drivers and holiday guests.
  • The most searched-for holiday movie on Fire TV with Alexa was Home Alone, followed by Elf and The Grinch.
  • Alexa helped turn on holiday lights tens of millions of times.

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  • According to Amazon Charts, the most read and most sold book in the U.S. during this holiday season was The Guardians by John Grisham, and the most wished for books in the U.S. during this holiday season were A Warning by Anonymous, The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Wrecking Ball by Jeff Kinney, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: The Illustrated Edition by J.K. Rowling & Jim Kay, and Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.

Link to the rest at Amazon