NYT and the State of Life

In today's New York Times there's a full page ad by 900 authors telling Amazon to stop putting authors at risk.  Because, you know, only Amazon is at fault in the whole Amazon vs Hachett kerfluffle.  Yesterday, there was a love piece (having read it I can't really call it journalism) with Douglas Preston - the man behind the ad in today's NYT.  You can read it here.  Others have fisked it in other places - the best being in my opinion here.  I'm not going to try to even break it down.  Instead I want to look at something Mr. Preston said in the NYT article -

About half his book sales used to come from Amazon. But since the retailer started discouraging orders, his paperback sales are down 61 percent and his e-book sales are down 62 percent.

Lets look at this for a minute - Amazon, a retailer, is discouraging sales.  Being of some small journalistic training, I went to Amazon, and found Douglas Preston.  Wait, if Amazon is discouraging sales, wouldn't they not have any material for him on their site?  I can get his books on Kindle and in dead tree format.  I can't pre-order his books.  Perhaps this is how they are discouraging his sales?  Amazon and his publisher don't have a contract - Amazon doesn't know that they'll be getting his latest book when it comes out.  Why should they try to sell something they may not get?  More importantly why should Amazon even be carrying his books currently except as used materials?  They don't have a contract with the supplier.  They can sell what stock they have in paper back and hard back format and sell what's on their servers in e-book format, if they're feeling nice about it.  They don't have to sell his materials at all. 

The other part of this is even more important - his sales have dropped.  According to other articles, Mr. Preston has stated that Amazon has pulled his discounts.  Again, I looked on the page - some materials are discounted, some aren't.  But here's something I've not seen anyone talk about - if it requires a discount for your materials to sell,  perhaps the suggested retail price is to high.  We, as consumers have been taught for years to look for the best deal - the cheapest price.  When you buy a car from "Uncle Ahab's Auto Shop", you don't pay the MSRP - you get the best deal you can from the dealership or you move on to the next one that will work with you.  People do the same thing with their entertainment - if the best price comes at a discount you go for it.  But if the best you can get is what the manufacturer recommends, you're going to think twice about buying it.  Especially when it comes to entertainment - and lets face it, reading is entertainment.  When you're worried about feeding the family, you're not going to spend ten bucks when you can spend five.  And when your publisher insists that the best price for your goods is not something the market will bear, you're going to lose sales.  When your publisher wants e-book prices set high enough that its cheaper for people to buy paperbacks, your sales are going to suffer.  But that's not the retailers fault.  Its basic economics.