Back to the article: "Some cookbook authors said they were concerned and surprised to learn about the collaboration between their publishers and Amazon. When Garten was informed that her entire book was online, her genial tone changed. 'It's as though they were setting up a store next to mine and giving away everything for free. Why would you come to my store?'" Do you hear echoes of the once-mighty record companies here? I do. Very loud ones.
"Fran McCullough, author of the "Best American Recipes," said, 'As an author, that is really irritating. Sounds like they deliver it on a plate to your printer.'"
bookofjoe's take on all this: it will dismantle the publishing and bookstore business just as surely as Napster and Gnutella eviscerated the music industry. Then why am I, as an author of books, so cheerful about all of this? Because it will create far more opportunity and income for me than it takes away. Just as the movie business pissed and moaned in their lawsuit against Sony that the VCR would destroy them, only to now get most of their income from tapes and DVDs, this Sturm und Drang will eventually shake out to all us authors' benefit, because, in the end, we have what NO ONE ELSE can produce: content. Go ahead, start your own bookofjoe blog, I don't give a shit: let's see how interesting yours is vs. mine. Come on, bring it on!
Oh, by the way, if you want to read my latest book for free, AND print out your own copy - also free - go to iuniverse.com - that's my publisher - and scroll down the page to "Browse Before You Buy"; now, wasn't that easy? Why waste $10.95 at Amazon? Just be my friend and visit me here occasionally, 'cause right here's where it's ALL gonna be happening. Just wait 'till I get MY cellcam, and learn how to put pix directly on the screen... WooWoo!
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
i don't think it's gonna dismantle anything.
anybody who will snag, say, a recipe from a book without buying it wouldn't have bought the book in the first place.
2 - Eric Olsen
Joe , thanks for this as it is a hot topic. I don't think it will do any harm, either. The sections available around the search item is limited and will function like a 30-second sampling of a song, which pretty much everyone now agrees helps sales, as opposed to file sharing entire songs, which may or may not help/hurt sales depending of who paid for the study.
I think it's all good! Yeay
3 - Chad Orzel
Of course, if Google is to be believed, there are already in excess of twenty thousand potato gratin recipes on the Web. Maybe that specific one isn't in the list (I don't know, as I don't really care enough to scan all 21,000 entries), but you don't need Amazon's help to do away with most of the need for cookboks.
4 - Michelle
Interesting questions, but would I go through all the hassle of printing 20% of the book as screenshots, wait 30 days and go on with the rest till I have the book complete? It's so much easier to enter a bookstore and buy the damn thing;-)
5 - Eric Olsen
exactly, concerns over this are - as usual - greatly overwrought. I see a net gain for publishers and authors. Give a little, gain a lot.
6 - Corinna Hasofferett
and a net gain for blogcritics and blogers at large, which in turn helps the industry:
at my last post here, thanks to Amazon's new toy I was able to find books relating to an important authority in the Israeli Army and politics history. No book of his seems to have been translated into English, but there was a very long list of books which mentioned him plenty.