Authors Guild Dismisses Amazon Offer – Wall Street Journal

Authors Guild Dismisses Amazon Offer Wall Street Journal Although he warned that the publishing “ecosystem cannot exist while entities within it are committed to the eradication of other entities,” his letter also praised Amazon for creating a…

Source: online.wsj.com

This is getting complicated…Interesting quotes from the article:

In his letter, Mr. Russo walked a careful line. Although he warned that the publishing “ecosystem cannot exist while entities within it are committed to the eradication of other entities,” his letter also praised Amazon for creating a successful e-book platform that benefits authors and publishers alike. The letter also chided publishers for not paying authors a higher digital royalty.

“It is worth stating that we are not anti-Amazon, or anti-e-book, or anti-indie-publishing,” the letter said. “Nor are we taking Hachette’s side in the present dispute. Those of us who publish traditionally may love our publishers, but the truth is, they’ve not treated us fairly with regard to e-book revenues, and they know it. That needs to change.””

and ending the article…

“We’re interested in the continued health of the entire publishing system,” Mr. Russo said in an interview. “And we want to get Amazon to say they are interested in that too.”

He said he believed that a reason that the negotiations turned contentious was that Amazon saw that publishers were making substantial profits on their digital titles, money that wasn’t being shared fairly with their authors.