In this corner, we have Mobipocket, a wiry French fighter. He's got a lot of experience but it takes a whole team of folks to get him into the ring.<\/p>\n
In the other corner, we have PayPal, a brawny little up and coming American pugilist.\u00a0 He's well financed but the set of his jaw speaks to a hidden agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But wait, sports fans, if we want to get a real handle on this battle, we can't look at the boxers in the ring.\u00a0 We've got to\u00a0check out the training rooms in the back.\u00a0 Wait a minute, they look a lot alike.\u00a0 Full of skinny businessmen\u00a0in dark suits with fire and dollar signs in their eyes.\u00a0 Who are these guys?\u00a0<\/p>\n
It's not Mobi vs\u00a0PayPal at all.\u00a0 Why, it's, it's ............Amazon against Ebay!!<\/p>\n
We don't know whose gonna win, but we know whose most likely to lose - the writers who carry as much weight in this battle as the bait at the end of a fishing lure.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mobi has been having some trouble for a while.\u00a0 Allegedly, it has\u00a0a long, long list of e-tailers that carry the e-books of authors who\u00a0offer them for sale through Mobi.\u00a0 But in recent months, sales of writers have been drying up until they disappear altogether.\u00a0 A read of Mobi's chat boards features posts of a number of authors, including yours truly, saying that their sales had been going gangbusters until presto, chango, they came to a dead stop.\u00a0 At that point, some enterprising authors - not me, but I wish it had been - commenced looking for a way to get their royalty money out of Mobi's accounts and into their own.\u00a0 See, Mobi has a policy.\u00a0 It pays no royalties to writers until they total $150.00.\u00a0 Funny, sales seems to stop about the time many writers would reach that threshold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, at least one enterprising chap figured out that if he canceled his Mobi account, that Mobi would have to pay him all accumulated royalties, whatever they totaled.\u00a0 Great.\u00a0 Since\u00a0nobody seems to be selling enough to reach the magic number, why not pull out and wait for Mobi to suffer enough losses that it fixes the royalty structure.\u00a0 Well, there's just one problem with that.\u00a0 It's the little matter of getting the money to the writer.<\/p>\n
Mobi has stated on its forum site that PayPal is not processing payments to writers from Mobi.\u00a0 Other comments, from e-tailers, say that PayPal is also not processing payments to Mobi.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Mobi says PayPal objects to some of the content carried on Mobi.\u00a0The Mobi site does carry a large erotic\u00a0section that\u00a0goes a lot further than sensual romance description in more mainstream books.\u00a0 Mobi carries erotic tales that are more like a literary version of porn movies.\u00a0 Essentially, Mobi carries what people post and leaves the filtering to the e-tailers and to the public's power of the mouse.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
From PayPal, the financial site, that seems like a rather prudish response.\u00a0 Prudish, but not totally out of line if one thinks of PayPal as accountants or the mortgage loan department of a bank.\u00a0 From PayPal, the wholly owned subsidiary of Ebay, that comes across like Hugh Hefner calling content too racy.\u00a0 Ebay carries things like pins showing lap\u00a0dancers, a sale of a XXX domain\u00a0name for an adult website, porn DVD's\u00a0about the beauty of blowjobs, anal plugs and ben wa balls, and yes, adult fiction books.\u00a0 Essentially, Ebay seems to do what Mobi does - if you own it,\u00a0 you can sell it on their site. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Having ruled out the possibility that Ebay is actually upset by the content on Mobi, we can now leap to the more interesting questions.\u00a0 Why is Ebay taking on Amazon and doing it \"undercover\"?\u00a0\u00a0This could be\u00a0the first shot of a new all out war between the E-Giants.\u00a0 It could be the first convoluted steps of a courtship ritual whereby Ebay buys Mobi.\u00a0 It could be chest-beating by the Goliaths who think nobody important (only writers) are getting hurt.\u00a0 Any way you look at it,\u00a0 the covert war can only lead to mass civilian-buyer casualties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the long run, the squeeze on Mobi means less choice for the reading public.\u00a0 Content on Mobi that is adult only is plainly labeled that way, just as it is on Ebay.\u00a0 If Ebay is going to play morality cop it should recall that line from the Bible about not casting stones unless you don't sin.\u00a0 By that wise criteria, informed choice is the only sane option.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also find it interesting that\u00a0Amazon seems to be rolling over and playing dead.\u00a0 \u00a0Amazon is acting like a punching bag that exists only for Ebay to pummel.\u00a0 It hasn't stood up for its subsidiary at all.\u00a0 Then again, Amazon seems to have simply bought Mobi and then ignored it.\u00a0 Amazon keeps sales of indie writers who post on Kindle scrupulously clean.\u00a0 If you post on Kindle and earn like $10.00 a month, you get paid.\u00a0 Why hasn't Amazon taken charge of Mobi?\u00a0 Why hasn't Amazon at least cleaned its subsidiaries' closets?\u00a0 At a minimum, Amazon should do a full examination of its sub, change the royalty structure, make sure that author's books are actually available to e-tailers and make sure that e-tailers\u00a0get treated like the valuable business partners that they certainly are.\u00a0 Instead, as it stands, Amazon's Kindle is the star protege and Mobi is the hungry orphan with an empty bowl begging for more.<\/p>\n
Writers are beginning to have more choices of sites.\u00a0 Scribd is the new\u00a0kid on the block.\u00a0 Its stores need to more organized, categorized and the work needs to be easier to find.\u00a0 \u00a0I think the site that may benefit from all this is Smashwords.\u00a0 You can post on Smashwords and the site will change your work into just about every format on the planet.\u00a0 So if a reader is looking for\u00a0 an e-book for their PC, their cell phone, their Palm Pilot, or their Kindle and yes, if they're even looking for an e-book in Mobipocket format, every book on Smashwords will be available to them.\u00a0 Smashwords has a new affiliate program that is in its infancy,\u00a0but\u00a0shows promise of becoming a strong player.\u00a0 Since Smashwords actually pays its authors every month and does it straight out, no strings attached, I suspect it treats affiliates the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Right now Amazon is the doormat Ebay is trouncing.\u00a0 It's easy enough for Ebay to win when Amazon doesn't play.\u00a0 If Amazon walked into Mobi, cleaned it up and dusted it off,\u00a0 made nice with the writers and the e-tailers, it would have the premier e-book distribution site on the internet.\u00a0 That means Amazon would have a big market that's getting bigger with every tick of the clock.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At a minimum, Amazon needs to honestly inform writers about its intentions with Mobi.\u00a0 Ebay needs to shed its pathetic disguise and openly challenge Amazon for e-book supremacy, or openly\u00a0make a buy out offer for Mobi.\u00a0 If Ebay does acquire Mobi, hopefully it will get the distribution service\u00a0back on the straight and narrow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amazon and Ebay have made millions from the writers and sellers who use their services.\u00a0 Behaving like Mafia Godfathers trying to act through minions doesn't keep their hands clean and it won't earn them any respect.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If Goliath and Gigantor are going to throw down, pretending it's David verses the Munchkins won't fool the American public.\u00a0 And treating writers like bait won't do their shareholders any service down the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The bait will leave their hooks and swim off to ponds named\u00a0Smashwords and Scribd where bait gets treated like the main course.\u00a0 Then, when the e-book market explodes, as it's poised to do, management\u00a0will\u00a0turn a bunch of executives at\u00a0Amazon and Ebay into chum to toss to the shareholder sharks.<\/p>\n
Above all else, neither giant should engage in corporate greed and call it moral outrage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this corner, we have Mobipocket, a wiry French fighter. He's got a lot of experience but it takes a whole team of folks to get him into the ring. In the other corner, we have PayPal, a brawny little up and coming American pugilist.\u00a0 He's well financed but the set of his jaw speaks ...continue reading \"David vs. the Munchkins, or is it Goliath vs. Gigantor?\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}