Say What?

For the last couple of years the publishing houses have been duking it out between each other and the heavy weight of all things e-commerce Amazon.

Before the Kindle, there really wasn't much of an eBook pie to divide.  Amazon that there never would be an e-Book market without an easy way to consume the content.

(There really wasn't much internet shopping going on before Amazon taught people to shop online so this is an old party trick of Amazon's.)

None of the publishers and few book sellers thought that e-Books would ever have a market, but once there was one, the gold rush was on.

A few years later and six of the big houses publishing houses are under investigation by the DOJ for price fixing along with Apple. Each of these companies are giant's in their own rights, but they claim to be victims of "predatory pricing," which is a euphemism for free trade.

The author's guild has thrown their hat into the ring, choosing to focus on Amazon who is NOT part of the DOJ lawsuit. Their most recent attempt to tar and feather the internet retail giant named Publish America as one of Amazon's victims. 

Say what?

If you don't keep up with these things, Publish America is currently involved in a class action lawsuit for defrauding authors. The result has been that many authors have serious questions as to whether the Author's Guild is serving writers, especially their members who have been encouraged to partake in a program to publish their back lists to royalty rate of 15%. Smashwords for example, gives author's a royalty rate of 70%.

Is the Author's Guild acting on behalf of authors are has it become a modern day Captain Ahab in pursuit of the white whale? What do you think?

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