Has Amazon Gone A Bridge Too Far In Their Pre-Order Crusade?
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- June 12, 2014
Starts delaying pre-orders of Warner Brothers products
By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)
When Netflix agreed to pay tribute to Comcast to escape their buffering of streaming video, it opened up the door for others to use the same kind of extortionist tactics to get a greater piece of the pie. And as such, we’ve seen issues with other ISPs slowing down not only Netflix, but YouTube and other streaming sites as well. But who knew that this would have an impact on... books? Amazon has been delaying or canceling orders of book of publishers who won’t pay more for the privilege of having their materials sold through Amazon’s portals. But they may have got a tiger by the tail going after Warner Brothers.
It started with Hachette Book Group, a conglomerate book publishers who had such notable authors under it’s roof as J.K. Rowling, David Baldacci, and Navy Seal Marcus Lutrell (Lone Survivor). Amazon decided to slow down, and flat out refuse to take orders for all Hachette published books. The beef is over Amazon’s wish to pay less royalties for books sold at the portals, and to charge less for eBooks in an effort to bolster Kindle book sales. Hachette doesn’t want to renegotiate and Amazon has decided to send customers elsewhere by deleting pre-order buttons on Hachette pages or to simply list them as being “unavailable.”
Now it looks like Amazon is going after Warner Bros., as it has refused to offer advanced orders on DVDs for The Lego Movie, 300: Rise of an Empire, Winter's Tale, and Transcendence since last month. It’s quite a gamble. Warner Bros. is a lot larger than Hachette, but has ties to the book group since it represents Warner authors like J.K. Rowling.
Amazon may be cocky in that they believe that their war with Hachette and other publishers in Europe is going well, but there seems to be no end in sight as publishers may be content to let Amazon bleed for awhile, believing that fans will simply go elsewhere. And the same could go for Warner Bros., especially as Amazon widens its refusal to other studios like Universal, Paramount, and Disney.
I mean, lets face it, we’re talking movies (physical discs) here, not books. And this may also serve to hasten the design to make the move to streaming options rather than optical discs, which have experienced a drop in sales over the last few years. And that will lead users into the same conflict with streaming video. Currently, with great irony, Amazon is offering Warner movies for streaming via Amazon Prime video, but with DVDs and Blu-rays, users can only “sign up to be notified when available.”
This is the trend. Online portals like Amazon and the ISPs have the power, because they are the digital gatekeepers. They can cut off access to get what they want and the FCC seems unmotivated to do anything about it. It may be that since the head of the FCC is a former cable industry lobbyist, that their interests are well represented. Unfortunately, it means that the consumer will end up on the short end of the stick, either buy having to pay more for the content we enjoy, or by being inconvenienced to find it elsewhere.
Hat Tip – the LAT
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Image: Dan Seitz, Uproxx
