Last month, 900 authors sent Amazon a letter asking for the company to resolve its dispute with book publisher Hachette.
Now, a letter to Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos signed by (at time of writing) 1,069 authors are adding facts and figures to show how much the battle is hurting sales figures. In short, as a result of Amazon’s refusal to allow Hachette pre-orders and shipping delays, sales are reportedly down anywhere from 50 percent to 90 percent. This is in all book formats: hardcover, softcover and e-book.
The letter (available in full here) says in part: “We find it hard to believe that all members of the Amazon board approve of these actions. We would like to ask you a question: Do you as an Amazon director approve of this policy of sanctioning books? Efforts to impede or block the sale of books have a long and ugly history. Would you, personally, want to be associated with this?”
The letter alleges that Amazon has refused pre-orders, delayed shipments, reduced discounts and used pop-ups to cover Hachette author pages.
The group of signatories include big names like Stephen King and Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) and literary authors like Jennifer Egan and Mark Z. Danielewski.
Though the letter is addressed to Bezos, it will also be sent via mail to 10 Amazon board members.
There has been no response from Amazon as of yet, though it replied to the August letter, saying that it offered a number of deals that would reportedly do little harm to authors.
The big feud began in late May of this year, when Amazon told customers it would no longer be accepting pre-orders for Hachette titles. The main issue in the dispute is how profits will be shared between the two companies.
