OT (sort of): If you like what Television has done to baseball (and for that matter American education and culture) you're going to love what the Internet is about to do to books. On top of this, SI Bob has been laid off, one or more Death Watch threads have been started for SI (consensus: r.i.p. March 1), and it looks like the leftovers will be going all-wireless or perhaps rented out to other companies for subscription services. TexasDude's choice of a thread title here takes on a new and unexpected meaning: "2001*The One for Boom or Doom" indeed! Marx was almost right. Rather than destruction, capitalism contains the seeds of its own disgusting decadence. Don't want to add to Cisco's problems, but with the relentless commercialization, and worse, of the Web I think I'll soon be trading in my computer for a really nice pen and pencil set.
Amazon makes publishers pay
By CBS.MarketWatch.com
Feb 7, 2001
cbs.marketwatch.com
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Amazon.com Inc. will start charging book
publishers as much as $10,000 per title in exchange for having its in-house
editors recommend their books in promotions emailed to customers,
reported the Wall Street Journal in its online edition Wednesday.
Previously, the Internet retailer did not charge publishers for its email
recommendations, which were determined by Amazon book editors.
Amazon (AMZN: news, msgs) said it will continue to recommend titles
for which it has received no fees from publishers, and will disclose books
for which it has received payments. But the new policy could give
Amazon incentive to recommend titles for which it believes publishers will
pay hefty promotional fees.
Separately, Amazon said it will use its payments system to handle charges
for other Web sites. The program, called the Honor System, is aimed at
Web sites asking for voluntary donations or one-time fees to access
products such as music downloads.
Amazon plans to take 15 percent of such payments, plus 15 cents, for
each use. |
