Amazon: if you’re going to quote Orwell, do it right

I did not see this. But then I also haven’t written an email trying to paint myself as the goodie in the fight between Amazon and Hachette publishers. Previously I’ve confessed I’m a bit lost in the details yet Amazon’s email so enraged me that I’ve become, well, enraged.

The bit of the Amazon email that left the most bad taste in my mouth was the company’s bad taste in tying its commercial interests to the Second World War. But it also said this:

“The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if ‘publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.’ Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion.”

An Important Kindle Request – email from Amazon (9 August 2014)

The New York Times was a bit more thorough than I was: it checked the source. The newspaper reports:

This perceived slur on the memory of one of the 20th century’s most revered truth-tellers might prove to be one of Amazon’s biggest public relations blunders since it deleted copies of “1984” from readers’ Kindles in 2009.

A moment’s web searching would have revealed to the Amazon Books Team, which is credited as the source of the Hachette post, that it was wildly misrepresenting this “famous author.”

When Orwell wrote that line, he was celebrating paperbacks published by Penguin, not urging suppression or collusion. Here is what the writer actually said in The New English Weekly on March 5, 1936: “The Penguin Books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if the other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.”

Orwell then went on to undermine Amazon’s argument for cheap e-books. “It is, of course, a great mistake to imagine that cheap books are good for the book trade,” he wrote, saying that the opposite was true.

“The cheaper books become,” he wrote, “the less money is spent on books.”

Instead of buying two expensive books, he said, the consumer will buy three cheap books and then use the rest of the money to go to the movies. “This is an advantage from the reader’s point of view and doesn’t hurt trade as a whole, but for the publisher, the compositor, the author and the bookseller, it is a disaster,” Orwell wrote.In a Fight With Authors, Amazon Cites Orwell, but Not Quite Correctly – David Streitfeld, New York Times (10 August 2014)

NYT’s full piece also quotes a tweet to Amazon from technology journalist Glenn Fleishman, who wrote:

He was using irony. It’s a literary device. You sell books. What is wrong with you?

Update: Hachette responds to Amazon

I stayed out of this both on here and in my head because I thought Amazon vs Hachette would play itself out quickly, that there was doubtlessly posturing and arguments on both sides, and that I didn’t really understand all the ramifications anyway. Then Amazon sent out a cloying email that so antagonised me I had to vent about it. Apparently their plea for us to email Hachette worked enough, though, because now Hachette has replied publicly.

I still don’t understand all the ramifications. And I’m still not saying Amazon is the bad guy, I’ve just said that they write some really aggravatingly patronising bollocks in their emails. So for completeness, here’s the full text of Hachette’s response.

Thank you for writing to me in response to Amazon’s email. I appreciate that you care enough about books to take the time to write. We usually don’t comment publicly while negotiating, but I’ve received a lot of requests for Hachette’s response to the issues raised by Amazon, and want to reply with a few facts.

• Hachette sets prices for our books entirely on our own, not in collusion with anyone.
• We set our ebook prices far below corresponding print book prices, reflecting savings in manufacturing and shipping.
• More than 80% of the ebooks we publish are priced at $9.99 or lower.
• Those few priced higher—most at $11.99 and $12.99—are less than half the price of their print versions.
• Those higher priced ebooks will have lower prices soon, when the paperback version is published.
• The invention of mass-market paperbacks was great for all because it was not intended to replace hardbacks but to create a new format available later, at a lower price.
As a publisher, we work to bring a variety of great books to readers, in a variety of formats and prices. We know by experience that there is not one appropriate price for all ebooks, and that all ebooks do not belong in the same $9.99 box. Unlike retailers, publishers invest heavily in individual books, often for years, before we see any revenue. We invest in advances against royalties, editing, design, production, marketing, warehousing, shipping, piracy protection, and more. We recoup these costs from sales of all the versions of the book that we publish—hardcover, paperback, large print, audio, and ebook. While ebooks do not have the $2-$3 costs of manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping that print books have, their selling price carries a share of all our investments in the book.

This dispute started because Amazon is seeking a lot more profit and even more market share, at the expense of authors, bricks and mortar bookstores, and ourselves. Both Hachette and Amazon are big businesses and neither should claim a monopoly on enlightenment, but we do believe in a book industry where talent is respected and choice continues to be offered to the reading public.

Once again, we call on Amazon to withdraw the sanctions against Hachette’s authors that they have unilaterally imposed, and restore their books to normal levels of availability. We are negotiating in good faith. These punitive actions are not necessary, nor what we would expect from a trusted business partner.
Thank you again and best wishes,
Michael Pietsch [Hachette CEO]

Thanks to Digital Book World for the text and to Jason Arnopp for the tipoff.