[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BlogPosting","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2014\/06\/10\/how-amazon-loses-even-if-it-wins-the-hatchette-fight\/#BlogPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2014\/06\/10\/how-amazon-loses-even-if-it-wins-the-hatchette-fight\/","headline":"How Amazon loses even if it wins the Hatchette fight","name":"How Amazon loses even if it wins the Hatchette fight","description":"CEO Jeff Bezos seems to taking actions that are disrupting Amazon\u2019s customers in his company\u2019s contract fight with Hachette Book Group. ","datePublished":"2014-06-10","dateModified":"2024-04-12","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/amy\/#Person","name":"Amy Hatch","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/contributor\/amy\/","identifier":5,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/58a96e3922c3a3554b3ac5a72d5dcb06fcb90f2073da9af5ccd64f0ce10fb2fe?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/58a96e3922c3a3554b3ac5a72d5dcb06fcb90f2073da9af5ccd64f0ce10fb2fe?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Future of Commerce","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/logo-foc-schema-app-1.png","width":172,"height":60}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Toggle-tax_FTRz.jpg","url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/Toggle-tax_FTRz.jpg","height":375,"width":1200},"url":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/2014\/06\/10\/how-amazon-loses-even-if-it-wins-the-hatchette-fight\/","about":[{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/marketing\/","name":"Marketing","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marketing","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q39809"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/marketing\/marketing-general\/","name":"Marketing","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marketing","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q39809"]},{"@type":"Thing","@id":"https:\/\/www.the-future-of-commerce.com\/sales\/sales-general\/","name":"Sales","sameAs":["https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sales","http:\/\/www.wikidata.org\/entity\/Q194189"]}],"wordCount":847,"keywords":["Amazon","E-commerce"],"articleBody":"For the first time in maybe ever, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos\u00a0in his company\u2019s contract fight with Hachette Book Group, seems to taking actions that aren\u2019t just disrupting retailers and shippers, but also Amazon\u2019s own customers. And that’s not like them.Amazon, which is locked in an ebook pricing-contract dispute with Hatchette, one of the world’s largest book publishing houses, retaliated against the publisher by making its titles unavailable. The rub? Amazon wants to keep prices low, as it does with everything it sells. Hatchette, meanwhile, wants to make money, of course, and maintain a healthy ability to make and sell books.In fact, the e-commerce giant took the unusual step last week of telling its customers that if they want any of the 1,000 books published each year by Hachette, they should look elsewhere to find them.\u00a0Hatchette Book Group\u2019s divisions include Grand Central Publishing, Little, Brown and Company, and Hyperion, among others. They have published many well known authors, including James Patterson, David Foster Wallace, David Sedaris,\u00a0Malcolm Gladwell,\u00a0and J.K. Rowling, among several others.What the fight\u2019s aboutLast year, the U.S. Department of Justice won an antitrust suit against Apple. The government had also sued five major publishers (including Hatchette), but they settled. The\u00a0judge ruled against the \u201cagency model\u201d the publishers and Apple had set up, with the goal to have publishers set ebook prices and give Apple \u2014 or other ebook sellers \u2014 a percentage.That deal between publishers and Apple was born out of a fear of Amazon\u2019s hardcore commitment to low book prices. And yet, many now argue Amazon was unfairly left unscathed by the lawsuit and the ruling, and is now free to play hardball with publishers as their contracts come up for renewal.Is Amazon a “monopsony”?While the Justice Department concerned itself with the collusion of producers that could have resulted in a situation akin to a monopoly, many during this Amazon-Hatchette dispute are saying that Amazon, by contrast, is a monopsony. In a monopsony,\u00a0there are many producers, but only one buyer, a situation that can likewise impede competition and ultimately hurt consumers.Indeed, Amazon sells 41% of the books sold in the U.S., and 67% of ebook sales. If Barnes & Noble\u2019s Nook enjoys a resurgence thanks to the bookseller\u2019s new deal with Samsung,\u00a0that could change. But for now, Amazon is closing in on being the only buyer and seller of ebooks.Other booksellers jump into the voidBooks-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, and several independent booksellers have been advertising the availability of their Hachette titles\u00a0during this time,\u00a0discounting them as an added enticement.Their efforts were aided last week by the actions of comedian Stephen Colbert, who compared Bezos to Harry Potter uber-villain Voldemort and egged\u00a0his viewers to buy books at independent bookseller Powell\u2019s, which also runs a major e-commerce site.\u201cI\u2019m not just mad at Amazon, I\u2019m Mad Prime,\u201d Colbert said, and provided a pdf with art saying \u201cI didn\u2019t by it at Amazon\u201d that Colbert advocated sticking onto book jackets a la Oprah’s Book Club.\u00a0It\u2019s worth nothing that Colbert\u2019s own three bookswere published by Hatchette\u00a0and that Powell\u2019s was inundated with orders as a result\u00a0of Colbert\u2019s diatribe.The bigger pictureHighly respected authors are weighing in as well. J.K. Rowling, whose book The Silkworm under the pen name Robert Galbraith will soon be released by Hatchette, agreed with Amazon on Twitter that there are \u201clots of ways to order\u201d the book \u201cas Amazon kindly suggest.\u201dAnd John Green, whose young adult bestseller The Fault In Our Stars is getting special attention because of its movie premiere, got into the fray and called Amazon a \u201cbully,\u201d although his books aren\u2019t even published by Hatchette.Aside from its cold-shoulder treatment of customers, Amazon may have another problem emerging from this dispute, of which the ire of beloved authors is a part. The discussion has gone beyond talk of fair prices \u2014 where Amazon would like to keep it because that is its main offer to consumers \u2014 and moved on to other issues. These include talk of the health of the publishing industry, the availability of books, and the importance of books, literature, and idea-sharing in our culture.\u00a0Hatchette\u2019s announcement at the end of last week that it would be laying off 28 employees in the U.S., about 3% of its staff, only helped drive home the idea that Amazon is behaving like a bully.Even as its dispute with Hatchette winds down, assuming it does, Amazon.com will soon have to negotiate new contracts with Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, two major publishers that may fight the e-commerce giant in the same way Hatchette has. That will only keep all of these issues alive. So far, Amazon has uncharacteristically had little to say about it all.  The friction is REAL when it comes to the modern buyer’s journey.\u00a0Fortunately, there’s an omnichannel solution. 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