(no subject)

[nolly]

Can anyone more familiar with the book publishing / retail industry define "windowing", as used in the beginning of this letter? I've tried googling, but the word is too overloaded, and the tor.com post doesn't allow comments.

Comments

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Temporary exclusive availability via alternate channels.

In this case, the 'extensive and deep windowing' he's referring to is that Amazon would not be allowed access to their books under the existing terms of sale without a 7 month delay on all titles from the time they're released in hardbound.

And just to avoid {{citation}}

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

This is the article I pulled the 7-month figure from.

bradhicks has a good article outlining the whole situation in a way that shows why I, along with him, support Amazon.com in this dispute.

Re: And just to avoid {{citation}}

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Sounds to me like there is no good guy here, really. Toby Buckell (http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2010/01/31/why-my-books-are-no-longer-for-sale-via-amazon/) is fairly convincing (to me) on the pro-publisher side.

I dunno. I rarely (practically never) buy books from Amazon anyway, but I buy a LOT of Tor books elsewhere, and I certainly don't want to see them keel over. They publish a lot of the things I like to read.

[howeird]

"deep windowing of titles" is about as obscure as marketing jargon gets. McM's CEO loses my vote by not being able to speak plain English in an open letter. Amazon has a long-standing policy of trying to keep price gouging off of their site, McMillan has a long-standing history of charging obscene prices for pretty much all their books, but especially textbooks. It costs so much less to publish an eBook they should be ashamed of themselves for boosting the price. You know it isn't going to the authors.

Re: And just to avoid {{citation}}

[xthread.livejournal.com]

Charles Stross has a much better article up about the debacle. Buckell's article gets some basic econ importantly wrong. (In particular, he misunderstands why prices fall over the period that a product is on the market, focusing entirely on the creator recoups the costs of creation, and missing out on the meta-fact that the reason that producers price things that way is that that's what leads to the producers receiving the most money for their products, because pricing goods that way allows a manufacturer to recoup the highest price from the people who are willing to pay the most for the product, without forgoing sales to all of the people who aren't willing to pay as high a price.)

Re: And just to avoid {{citation}}

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I read the Stross article before the Buckell, but I have issues with giving much credence to anything Stross says; he doesn't have a good track record with me, and he doesn't keep good company.

Re: And just to avoid {{citation}}

[xthread.livejournal.com]

I'm not making a comment on which one you should have a beer with, just which one is describing reality more accurately.

Re: And just to avoid {{citation}}

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I believe your assessment, but my econ fu is not strong enough to notice the issue myself, so, while I had read the Stross article, I dismissed it due to his history of distorting facts.

[xthread.livejournal.com]

That's a fascinating letter.
Put that way, it's a ferocious power grab by Macmillan - they want to shift their business model from 'we sell it to you at a price, you sell it to consumers at whatever price you feel comfortable with' to 'we set the price, you get a cut when you sell one.'
Fascinating.

[(Anonymous)]

Other folks have already covered what "windowing" is.

But think of it the same way as the year delay between the publication of a hardcover, and the release of the mass market paperback edition. The publisher wants to give the hardcover time to sell, assuming that given a cheaper alternative, folks will go for the PB.

Macmillan wasn't the only publisher in on this. Hachette and Simon and Schuster were also lined up against Amazon. From their point of view, it was about protecting the hardcover bestseller. Hardcovers go for higher prices and provide higher margins. The hardcover bestsellers are the crown jewels of publishing, producing the highest profits.

Amazon was selling Kindle editions for $9.99, and releasing Kindle editions simultaneously with hardcovers. If the user has the user has a Kindle (or Kindle edition viewer software on their iPhone or PC), guess which they bought? The publishers were losing valuable hardcover sales to Kindle editions.

Assume down the road that some ebooks won't become available till some time after the hardcover is out, for the same reason a paperback isn't.
______
Dennis