Boycott Amazon.com! They Unscrupulously Squeeze Authors!

[Valley Oak]

The following article was published by The New York Times on August 7, 2014. By DAVID STREITFELD:

900 Authors Sue Amazon for Using Thug Tactics

"Amazon decided to discourage readers from buying books from [Douglass Preston's] publisher, Hachette, as a way of pressuring it into giving Amazon a better deal on e-books."

ROUND POND, Me. — Out here in the woods, at the end of not one but two dirt roads, in a shack equipped with a picture of the Dalai Lama, a high-speed data line and a copy of Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience,” Amazon’s dream of dominating the publishing world has run into some trouble.

Douglas Preston, who summers in this coastal hamlet, is a best-selling writer — or was, until Amazon decided to discourage readers from buying books from his publisher, Hachette, as a way of pressuring it into giving Amazon a better deal on e-books. So he wrote an open letter to his readers asking them to contact Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, demanding that Amazon stop using writers as hostages in its negotiations.

Mr. Preston has dismissed
Amazon’s suggestions that he is
a “human shield” for Hachette.
Photo credit: Craig Dilger for
The New York Times

The letter, composed in the shack, spread through the literary community. As of earlier this week 909 writers had signed on, including household names like John Grisham and Stephen King. It is scheduled to run as a full-page ad in The New York Times this Sunday.

Amazon, unsettled by the actions of a group that used to be among its biggest fans, is responding by attacking Mr. Preston, calling the 58-year-old thriller writer “entitled” and “an opportunist,” while simultaneously trying to woo him and his fellow dissenters into silence.

Mr. Preston is unswayed.

“Jeff Bezos used books as the cutting edge to help sell everything from computer cables to lawn mowers, and what a good idea that was,” he said. “Now Amazon has turned its back on us. Don’t they value us more than that? Don’t they feel any loyalty? That’s why authors are mad...”

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