Friday, February 5, 2016

Amazon and the Author

From Publishers Weekly:
In opening remarks, New America Foundation senior fellow and author Barry Lynn said these fears about Amazon are not easy to make public. Both he and Preston, who followed Lynn to talk about “Amazon and the Authors,” said some authors and editors refused to take part in the event because they worried about professional recriminations.

After Preston detailed some of “Amazon’s dirty tactics,” which include its 2014 dispute with Hachette over e-book pricing, lawyer, author, and past Authors Guild president Scott Turow sat in conversation with author and journalist Christopher Leonard. Turow joked that “Amazon has been very good for me,” but he’s involved in this fight because he believes in “an independent authorial class.”

The first panel, moderated by Harper’s magazine president and publisher John R. MacArthur, featured author and editor Frank Foer, Smashwords' Coker, author Susan Cheever, and William Morris Endeavor literary agent Eric Simonoff. Cheever said she's concerned that "business practices [by Amazon] have been harmful to the future of books.” Foer claimed that Amazon is "destroying the culture of book publishing." (Read more.)
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