AmazonFail

Amazon is the online bookstore giant. It sells everything, and tons of people use it.

Well, not anymore.

Weekend before last, Amazon and publisher Macmillan got into a spat about e-book prices. Macmillan, who signed a deal with Apple and iPad, wants to raise the price of some of its e-books to up to $15 from the $10 Amazon had been charging. Amazon refused, they both got mad at each other, and then Amazon decided to not just stop selling Macmillan e-books – it pulled all of them.

And thus we have AmazonFail.

Amazon didn’t give a warning. It didn’t try to hold it over Macmillan’s head as a threat. It did piss off a lot of authors – Macmillan, which includes the publishing company TOR, is one of the Big Six publishing companies.

Needless to say, the authors were surprised – and angry. A lot of their sales occur online, and suddenly no one can get their books from the biggest online distributor. They’re especially irritated that they’re being dragged into a fight that has nothing to do with them. Amazon and Macmillan battle, and the authors lose.

“Amazon apparently forgot that when it moved against Macmillan, it also moved against Macmillan’s authors,” author John Scalzi said on his blog.

You’d think that after a weekend of authors tweeting, blogging, and generally doing enough Internet ranting that all their fans were pissed off too that Amazon would do something.

Nope.

Macmillan’s CEO sent out a professional-sounding press release, but Amazon did nothing. Well, not quite nothing. There was a forum post from the Kindle team that said Amazon would have to give up because “Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles.”

Let that statement sink in for a minute. Macmillan has a monopoly over its titles? Terrible. And Hostess should give up its exclusive right to Twinkies, too.

So, let’s recap: Amazon, pissed off at Macmillan, pulled all Macmillan’s books, regardless of the fact that it was about a sixth of its stock – without warning. It didn’t release any comment from CEO Jeff Bezos or any other high-ranking Amazon official, but instead let the Kindle Team post an idiotic statement on its forum.

Meanwhile, a week and a half later, where are the books?

Some are back as of Monday morning – Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s “The Gathering Storm” is available, as is L. E. Modesitt, Jr.’s latest book. But John Scalzi’s books still aren’t back.

Amazon did a crappy thing, but the ones who really felt it were the authors.

“For those of us who had book launches before the holidays, most of you who want our books already have them,” Sanderson said on his blog. “But think of Steven Erikson, who had a new book come out a couple of weeks ago. Or heck, Ben Bova, Charlie Stross and L. E. Modesitt Jr. had books come out today. First week sales, as everyone knows, are very important for a book’s future. What Amazon did to me was annoying; what it did to these folks was downright nasty.”

Some think Amazon, as the distributor, has the right to sell what it wants. I think its executives are idiots – they pulled a sixth of their stock without warning, pissed off a lot of people and screwed over a bunch of authors who had nothing to do with the fight between Amazon and Macmillan. Very classy, Amazon.