Over 900 Authors Will Protest Amazon in Full-Page New York Times Ad
After months with Jeff Bezos' fingers planted in their eyeballs, hundreds of pissed off writers are buying a full-page middle finger to Amazon. Their message is clear: please stop screwing us in order to promote world retail domination.
Since May, Amazon has been locked in a conflict with Hachette, blocking customers from pre-ordering the publisher's books, deliberately slowing deliveries, and sending prices soaring. All this, because Amazon wants a larger take. According to a New York Times report, author Douglas Preston has rallied more than 900 fellow writers to sign a public letter of grievances against Amazon:
As of earlier this week 909 writers had signed on, including household names like John Grisham and Stephen King. It is scheduled to run as a full-page ad in The New York Times this Sunday.
Amazon, unsettled by the actions of a group that used to be among its biggest fans, is responding by attacking Mr. Preston, calling the 58-year-old thriller writer "entitled" and "an opportunist," while simultaneously trying to woo him and his fellow dissenters into silence.
This all comes after Amazon has dismissed critics of its pricing battles as "human shields" for Hachette, and labeled Preston as "entitled."
The letter can be read in full here. At the letter's end, it asks readers to help these threatened authors:
We respectfully ask you, our loyal readers, to email Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, at jeff@amazon.com, and tell him what you think. He says he genuinely welcomes hearing from his customers and claims to read all emails at that account. We hope that, writers and readers together, we will be able to change his mind.