Jay Lake (jaylake) wrote,
Jay Lake
jaylake

[publishing] The quiet hours of Amazon

Marking the quiet time since Amazon's first, last, and so far only rather inept comments on the Macmillan pricing struggle.


[ Clock courtesy of @brandg. ]

And I will note per several comments from other folks that while Amazon is muffing the corporate PR war rather spectacularly, they seem to be winning the popular media war. Almost all the reporting I've seen draws from the Kindle Team letter in referencing a price increase without explaining that there's also a low-side price of $5.99 which is a significant decrease, nor bothering to explain the dynamic pricing model.

That's lazy reporting, and factually incorrect on the face of it, but what consumers are reading and hearing is "Macmillan tries to raise ebook prices on Amazon." So Amazon's deliberately flawed, self-serving narrative is winning in the popular media.

In other words, the continued silence may be a very subtle PR strategy indeed. More likely it's a quiet period while negotiations continue. Or possibly they've all turned into squid at Amazon HQ in Seattle. As the saying goes, never assign to malice subtlety what can be explained by stupidity.

Maybe Amazon is very, very smart in this PR strategy. Maybe they're just kind of lucky. Does it matter?

Meanwhile the silence of the Amazon continues

Tags: amazonfail, publishing
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