They lose 50 to 90% of their copyrights
Nobel laureates B. S. Naipaul and Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie, all associates of the famous literary agent Andrew Wylie, are just some of the big names in literature who came to join their voices against Amazon's "monopolistic" practices, as hundreds of their colleagues have already done, on the occasion of the conflict between this electronic giant and the multinational publishing group Hachette regarding the prices of e-books.
Last May, in the wake of the aforementioned war, Amazon deployed a series of tactics to discourage its customers from buying Hachette publications – from deactivating orders to delays in book shipments. The reaction of the affected authors, who claim that with these actions they lose from 50% to 90% of their copyrights, was massive and the American writers' union Authors United was on their side from the very beginning. The protest letter that the latter sent to the board of directors of Amazon was co-signed by, among others, Stephen King, Donna Tart and Ursula Le Guin, while the other day the author-clients of the Wiley agency joined their fight, giving even greater dimensions to the confrontation.
What is now being sought is not only the normalization of the distribution of Hachette publications by the world's largest online bookstore without vindictive intentions on its part. The issue, the authors say, is to finally clarify the rights and obligations of a company like Amazon, which reaps the lion's share of book sales in the US and controls the largest e-book distribution platform. Hence the appeal by Author United to the US Department of Justice with a request to put Amazon in the target of a judicial investigation for illegal monopoly tactics.
Editor: STAVROULA PAPASPYROU
Source: enet.gr
