Do you keep up and wonder about the financial relationship between authors, booksellers, publishers and more recently Amazon? I’ve caught several interesting headlines on the battle between Amazon and a top-five publisher Hachette … and this article from Sound and Video Contractor does a great job explaining the honest relationship.

Here’s the full article: Amazon vs. the World.

Some notes from Books for Her:

• Publishers and booksellers negotiate prices that retailers will sell books – along with the place where the books will be visible (for instance, the books you see at the end of an aisle). This includes ebooks.
• Recently Hachette didn’t want to agree to Amazon’s ‘rather cutthroat terms’ so its books are not available on Amazon (for instance, J.K. Rowling’s new book The Silkworm (Cormoran Strike Book 2) was not immediately available though it now is). Authors and readers were upset by Amazon.
• The author, Jason Bovberg, explains that Amazon has actually helped the book publishing industry to be more author-centric. For instance, its self-publishing platform allows authors who wouldn’t have been published to be seen – and potentially get bigger book deals for their next publication.

Bovberg ends his article citing another by Mishka Shubaly, “Sympathy for the Devil: In Defense of Amazon.” “Jeff Bezos didn’t build Amazon: We did. Amazon didn’t buy out and board up independent bookstores. We abandoned them. We chose convenience over community, commerce over art. The Big Five sell glossy covered, sensational page-turners and celebrity tell-alls and escapist vampire soft-porn because this is what we’ve told them we want to read.”

Who’s side are you on?