Chief crazy horse and decided to head on back to the fort. They thought they were probably meeting altogether at that time. I think that, to me, surprised me that nobody, he didnt want anybody to know that he was out of the fight. Right. I completely agree with that. I think the crook really blew it. Not only did he fail in his battle, and decide to stop because he was out of ammo, and according to one of his aides he spent the next few weeks hunting and fishing, ma he sent word he didnt send any scouts. He didnt try to inform the other columns that were in the field operating against the enemy. He sent word back to the fore and over to chicago and then had to come back up to fort lincoln and out to the field, and everything was over by the time anyone you that his guys were out of the fight. Crook, he really blew. I dont know why he doesnt get more criticism but in my opinion, he just shouldve sent people out to inform people. He knew they were coming. Why didnt he send out scouts . At least give it a shot. Anyway, great point. This is a depressing time. Were going to any questions you and ask you to have some coffee, tea, drinks, cookies, get some books, talk further with her all the. Thank you all for coming. Thank you to our friends at cspan, and we hope you enjoy us next year. [applause] every weekend, booktv offers programming on the nonfiction authors and books to keep watching for more here on cspan2 and watch any of our past programs online at booktv. Org. Thank you indeed to the Knight Foundation on their buddy from Miamidade County college and to all of you for joining us today. For the Book Business this summer was a season of discontent. Amazon, the giant online retailer and publishers of little brown imprint among others have locked horns. At stake with the terms of doing business moving forward, executive one of the power to set prices for the books in amazon recoils and being deprived of its trademark deep discount. While the negotiations went on behind closed corporate doors, authors and readers saw a new and darker side of amazon. The books were listed as full price or unavailable. When readers could order such books they learned of delivery would take weeks. Even amazons recommendation engine got involved. Prequel is suggesting alternatives to the title. Authors and not only should respond with condemnation of amazon as a monopolist and a bully. In the shadow of ukrainian civil war then raging, jeff visos was even likened to vladimir putin. Frustrated readers soon began to reconsider the relationship with amazon and by extension with the digital marketplace. Even wall street wavered in his longstanding support of amazons stocks. The share prices falling near 20 off its 52 week high. Just 10 days ago the two sides announced a deal that will allow them to set their own prices but which amazon says also encourages the publisher to deliver lower prices. In other words, both publisher and retailer have declared victory and gone home. Yet the book community, publishers, authors and readers may not be prepared to let them go. At the National Book awards on wednesday evening last week, a rider chastised publishers who put topic before art even as she called amazon a property. She also called in our colleagues to rise up against the order. She said, books are not just commodities. Trophimov is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable, but then so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in part, she said. Very often in our art, the art of words. Our panel today will consider the challenge to take up resistance in the digital marketplace and we will ask if the future of writing, publishing and reading lies in the digital world, who gets to decide what the world looks like . Joined me for the discussion would reduce to the very heart and andrew albany, Senior Writer of Publishers Weekly. Welcome. Is the author of kindle the book single, battle of 999. He has covered the publishing and Information Technology field since 1999 and the former editor of Oxford University press and reagan books. To his right is franklin or. He is editor of the new republic which is celebrate its centennial in 2014. Is editor of insurrections of the mind. Founded by Herbert Crowley and Walter Lippman in 1940, a new republic a voice to the growing Progressive Movement and became a leading left wing voice in american politics and culture. Franks international bestseller, how soccer explains the world, has been translated into 27 languages. To his right is esther taylor, welcome. She is a writer and document or filmmaker, author of the peoples platform. A new times editors best choice. And finally to my left, or in tiger, welcome. He became ceo of the American Booksellers Association in 2009. Founded in 1900, the aba at book web. Org is a notforprofit trade workstation for independent bookstores. At the aba for 25 years he has worn many hats, associate executive director, chief operating officer and 2013 he was named the person of the year for the role in leading the research of independent bookselling. A warm welcome to all the panel. Andrew, id like to start with you because very briefly, the impasse that came to edwards attention this summer but i would if you could fill in details a little bit more . How did we get there . What does it mean or what did it mean at that time to the Book Business . How did we get here. Well, im assuming most of you have some idea, have been following the dispute and let me just ask a quick question of the first. Over the course of his discussion and debate how many of you would say you cited with show of hands. And how of you say you are siding with amazon . Okay. Most of you i assume are thinking its too prompted to pick one side or the other. Im not asking so i can pander my argument to you. Its interesting if i could say and do, they were more shorthand for the publisher side of thing than for amazon sting you agree you could count that quickly. Spent it seemed that way to me. Someone who covered this for Publishers Weekly been covering the industry for a long time. I was disappointed in the way is all unfolded over the summer because it was pitched to us as this battle for the future of the book. In reality what it was was a negotiation between two parties. We knew had that negotiation was going to end. Is going to end with a deal and as public as the debate has been is going to end with a private deal thats confidential. We dont know sadly whats in that contract. That was frustrating to me because i believed we need to have a good conversation about the future of digital reading. Talk about Digital Rights managed and dated and libraries and all these things but the confidential and to the public book debate made me think that we are a long way from giving that conversation. I was disappointed we didnt have a broader conversation about the future of digital reading we had a chance on help we still can have that conversation, but now that amazon and hachette have ended a negotiation with the deal anyone is supposedly thrilled with it, i wonder where we go from here. I was asking how we got to because for a number of years the Book Business had been selling books via amazon. They had a relationship going back to really the very beginning of it. Why not . Why did this come to an impasse this year . It is about ebooks. We often refer to amazon as the retailer. In reality amazon when it comes ebooks is a platform. They invested heavily in inventing the kindle and they did create the commercial ebook market that we now enjoy today. Thats been a net plus for people that we now have this commercial ebook market. Have we managed that is difficult. We are having a bit of a rough start at the beginning, no question. I think what the real problem was that difficult to talk with amazon in terms of monopoly also to talk about the big five publishers in terms of being a cartel. They control 90 of bestseller list. One come to controls 50 of those soulless. Its approved as the question what was the commercial ebook market if its left to those five publishers . It probably would not be where it is now. I think what were seeing is sort of the beginning stages of a longer battle over who is going, or how were going to access digital books. If it was a conversation and negotiation between two private parties in private, why should we care . And they announced a deal just 10 days ago, both sides said they were happy. Michael peach who is the ceo of hachette said he was happy. He told the New York Times he told the New York Times whos happy about moving out of his private office and into a six by seven give as well, so you wonder. But if they are have become if those parties are happy, why shouldnt the people in this room and watching now be happy as well . I can tell you what i am not. Price is a big part of this. We are talking out what the price of books are going to be. How people will be compensated and thats a big part of the. If we except that the future of reading is digital, and i do because im a two yearold and a four year old and they tool around on my ipad like they were born with it. They also read a lot of other books. They love books but if we except the future of reading is digital, and were accepting a world where platforms are closed where you have to buy one certain device to access books and you lose them if they go way. We are talking about our data in mind and privacy. All of these issues are being sorted out behind closed doors by these companies and the public doesnt have a seat at the table. We need to have a seat at the table. Im displeased because there should be some sort of transparency. Looks are different. Books are different. I think when he told them to a different standard, and we need to be in the room when the Digital Future is being hashed out. Frank, you want to see amazon held to account for behaving as a monopoly. Thats going to take some work because of the way antitrust law work. I wonder if you can give your perspective on that, and in your article for the new republic last month you talked about the size of amazons dominance. I think they control 41 of book sales and 67 of ebook sales. Not overwhelming but certainly very powerful. Im sorry to say that is overwhelming. In history of american political economies, and if we step back decades when antitrust was vigorously enforced in this country, those are numbers that would have spurred the government to have intervened to break up the company or to impose other sorts of remedies. Let me just start how you described the new republic as being left wing, which is a description but many newer leftwingers would dispute. The book is under threat. And i can start by explaining this as where i come from as an author. When i sit down to write a book, i need to have, i need to have somebody sponsoring my project because im not independently wealthy. If i want to go take a year or two years or three years out of my life which is what is required to produce a quality work of fiction or nonfiction in some cases, some of us are superhuman and race faster than that, but im not a superhuman fact writer. I need to take my time in order to read, to think, to report in order to come up with a book. I cant do that unless somebody helps subsidize that effort. And the relationship that i have with my publisher is that my publisher, i submit an idea to a publisher, and the publisher either likes the idea or doesnt like the idea. And fortunately right now, there are at least five different corporations i can sell my work to and a whole variety of smaller publishers and university presses. If one of those people likes my idea, theyre willing to give me an advance on sales in the future. And its an incredible act of faith that they take in becoming a creditor in my project. Its an incredible act of faith when a bank gives you money to buy a new house. That enables me to go and write that project. Whats happening now because of amazons dominance of that, of this business, amazon is able to exert ever greater power over the publishers. And so amazon, amazon is under pressure from its stockholders to produce ever greater returns to them. And so what the stockholders ask of amazon is show us more revenue. Right. So the way they do that is they go the publishers, and they say show us more revenue. So they cut these deals with the publishers and that squeezes the publishers, and they end up squeezing the authors, and that makes it harder and harder for people to take the Financial Risks to produce the kinds of books that you enjoy at a festival like this. Someone described it rather like what a chef does to a chicken, right . It cuts away, cuts away, cuts away until every piece of meat is stripped off the bone, and thats really the approach that amazon has taken. Right. Let me concede that amazon is a fantastic company in so many ways. Its a miracle that you can get any book delivered to your phone whenever you want it, its a miracle that theyre able to get books to you at your home in a day or two when you push a button. Thats incredible. But they, you know, thats created circumstances, though, where its almost impossible for anybody to compete against them. Theyre leveraging, theyre leveraging all these investments that theyve head in becoming an Everything Store and producing technology and establishing contracts with the Postal Service and with ups that make it almost impossible for anybody to compete with them. And so if nobody can compete with them and their share of the book market is going to grow every year, we have to either accept that fact and say that books are going to be dominated by one company and appreciate the dangers that imposes to our lit lawyer culture into our literary culture into our democracy, or we do something about it. Right. Well, amazons not here, as far as i know, but if they were, they might say that the Book Business is broken and that Book Publishers are i think you used the phrase in your book, you were quoting somebody else a bunch of antidiluvian losers. Is amazon right . Do they have a point that perhaps the way the world worked in the past was great at that moment, but we are in a digital marketplace, and theres a lot thats changed . Yeah. I dont like that theres five publishers that dominate, i dont like theyve been slow to adapt to the digital marketplace, and im sure as corporations they could behave in a much more profitseeking sort of way. But what i do like about the publishers is that they take a lot of intellectual risks, that they have very good taste, that theyre able to subsidize writers in doing projects that take long times to do and that they then in turn help promote works of fiction and nonfiction to and poetry, by the way, we should point out. Right. And, you know, the more that we fend on one we depend on one company and the more that publishing can strip, and what happens is that when you have one big company dominating the market, all the other publishers band together to try to seek safety. So penguin merges with random house, and suddenly we go from six to five publishers. That shed tries to merge with perseus and tries to become bigger. And as these companies become bigger and fewer, i as a writer have fewer places i can sell my project. Its kind of a miracle that i can get one of these guys to buy one of my books. But if im selling to only one or two of them, then im dependent on the whims of those publishers for accepting my idea. Right. And i think that brings us right to the heart of astrid taylors argument in her book, peoples platform, an answer that must sound very familiar to you. One of the points that you made in the book is, i think, critical to this discussion right now. That culture is the stage where anxieties about the marketplace sort of have a light shone on them, that we see them in full view. And one of the anxieties about this marketplace that you feel we ought to have is that rather than giving us a level Playing Field, the kind of promise of the web at the very early days, we see a Playing Field thats very much tilted in favor of enormous players the way that frank was describing. Yeah. My book takes a sort of broad look at the Digital Media landscape. And as someone who has worked as an independent filmmaker and also toured for the last year and a half with an independent rock band and looks at some of the sort of mythology that the internet would necessarily with a level be a leveler of the Playing Field and act like a sort of robin hood, so my book my title, the peoples platform, is sort of aspirational. Well, wouldnt it be great if we actually had a peoples platform, a different space not just commercial publishers or broadcasters . But its also slightly sarcastic almost because the point is almost all of these places that we visit online are special spaces with the exception of wikipedia which is one of the only noncommercial web sites that we visit en masse. So what i look at is the way that the problems of the old media landscape you know, and im someone who balm an independent journalist who became an independent journalist because i was critical of what the mainstream was offering out there. How problems of consolidation, centralization and commercialism have carried over. So instead of this thing that was predicted by sort of all the technology pundits, that the internet would disintermediate the old guard and allow for this new era of flourishing, what were seeing is consolidation, exactly what youre describing. In the face of these new digital giants like amazon, Book Publishers are merging. Theres one actual, theres mistake in the hard cover edition of my book when i started writing the project, there were five big record labels, and actually there are three now. And i had to correct that for the paperback. They control an overwhelming amount of the music market. Something like 20 of the 23 top hiphop singles last year were from universal music group. Theres a tendency to monopoly online that wasnt really acknowledged by the people who were sort of describing the wonderful transformations that were supposed to be upon us. Right. And your book goes into some of the ironies about this initial promise of the web and the reality that we see in 2014. And you focus in one place on the word open which has a wonderful, communal sound to it but is also participant of the open market part of the open market, the free market, so its both communal and capitalistic which seems kind of an oxymoron. Yeah. Thats the thing of thinking about amazon as a platform. Is it open . Yes, in the sense that people can selfpublish through it. Its also very closed, once youre locked into its kindle platform, you cannot freely take the ebooks that you got there. I think in addition to these three things theres also the return of a vertical integration which is a kind of you know, weve entered this retrograde future. You have amazon, the book shelf, the bookseller, the cia uses it for web hosting as do netflix and pinterest. It also is involved in content creation, and i think this is worrying for those of us who are independent creators. Amazon is also a publisher, its also getting involved in film production. You see this with netflix. So as a documenttarian, we rely on netflix, but now they are making original content. Not just series, but also documentaries. So they have this front page that is global, and they promote their films that theyve general rated, and you as a general rated, and you as a smaller person hope they surface your project because youre not getting that front page placement. It feels as though were in charge of our media destiny, we can watch whatever we want, comment on whatever we want online, and yet there are some counterforces that havent been totally acknowledged. So you know, in the end, im wondering why public options respect on the table. I mean, i respect arent on the table. I respect your suspicion of Government Intervention in the marketplace, but im a little bit with Ursula Mcginn on this. Id like to see a discussion about what public spaces on the web might look like and noncommercial alternatives, because i think theres been too much emphasis on what the web does for us as consumers and not enough on what it does for us as citizens. And i think we yeah. [applause] well, and i think you make the point very strongly in the book that the situation as it prevails today isnt somehow a natural situation, that it has to be that way. It can be different, and thats why i picked that line from Ursula Mcginns remarks. She was saying things can change because human beings can change them. Yeah. Or from the aba, i want to ask you about how booksellers felt watching all this transpire this summer. Theyve had a bone to pick with amazon for some time. How did it feel to watch somebody else battling with themsome. Well, you know, chris, the title of your session about monsters living in laptops is pretty apropos, and its important to disabuse you of the notion that the monsters in this laptop are the kind of muppet, cuddly kind of folks. [laughter] these are big, massive companies. You know, i think, you know, andrew referred to, you know, the concern about a business in which the large publishers are dominating the business. And a lot of us in the Book Business, obviously, had some concern about that recent consolidation between opinion win and ran done penguin and random house. But think about this the combined global empire of those combined companies do 5 of the sales that amazon does. And if you take the big five publishers and put em all together, were a barely in double digits in compared to what amazon sales are. So this is a real example of size really matters. And this company, amazon, is massive. And it influences everything about the Book Business. So as we watched what happened this summer, you know, what we were, you know, frankly reminded about was something that, you know, that jeff bezos said and others from amazon have said. Im not usually fond of quoting mr. Bezos, but he did say that they started out 12, 15 years ago selling books because you, book buyers, youre great consumers. You buy a lot of other stuff. And what the Book Business has become has become the loss leader for amazon to be able to sell flat screen televisions and shoes and diapers and every other commodity. Now, thats perfectly, thats their business model. Its perfectly legal, and theres no nothing illegal about that. I but those of us in the Book Business need to understand that our business and ultimately, as frank points out, the interests of consumers are being interfered with because there is a company that is using us as Collateral Damage to do something else. From the booksellers perspective, what is the nature of that interference . What exactly is amazon doing that you would have them not do . Well, i think the first thing theyre doing is attempting to eliminate any other perp in the middle of that any other person in the middle of that transaction. Frank described the role that publishers play t the role that the Publishing Community plays is indispensable in this process. Theyre prepared to dispense with that. They want to drive prices down. There isnt a consumer i know who doesnt want to pay lower prices. But i would submit and suggest that there is no example over time in American History where that kind of concentration of power ultimately leads to the benefit of consumers. So i think size is important, and i think it really is critical to create a diverse culture in which a range of content is going to be available to americans, let alone to folks around the world. We need a diverse culture, we need a diverse Publishing Community having all that power in one hand is not good. Would you like to see the government look into this . We already have an example and andrew alluded to it a few yearsing a when there was the socalled ebook price fixing case with apple and the major publishers. We have the government now in the publishers business. Would you like to see them get in even deeper . I thought the department of justice case against publishers was the most onesided example of the government looking at onehalf of the equation. Im not here to suggest that amazons engaged in illegal practice. I dont know if they are or theyre not. But they spent a lot of money investigating publishers, it seems to me, given the relative size of the Publishing Community and amazons size that having the government take a look at their practices would make some thens. And, frank foer, i think you agree with that. At least looking at this would be a worthwhile exercise. For sure. I mean, to me this is, this is the ball game. I mean, this is, books are central to the production of ideas and the production of ideas is central to having an educated citizenry and a robust democracy. And if we view that one company is on the brink of owning that industry and on the basis of tactics that are bullying and anticompetitive, then, yeah, i want, i want my government looking into that. Well, and, you know, you were quibbling about leftcertain, so forth and so son. Regardless of so on. Regardless of that, should this be a political issue . It is a political issue, especially since its pretty clear that, look, a Democratic Administration in power, and they have no interest in really investigating amazon. And so whats the alternative . The only alternative is that readers start to care about whats going to happen to the future of the books that they read. And so if readers go passively into this future and they dont, they dont start to ask questions about the future of this industry, then the future of the industry is inevitable. And so i dont actually ask, i dont actually as consumers i think its not really incumbent upon consumers to make the choices that government should be making for them. Im sure that everybody or, that the most antiamazon people in this room have used amazon. I mean, its just amazons a damn good web site. And it provides service cheap and efficiently. And, you know, weve all needed diapers in the next 24 hours or [laughter] or but the problem is one that only government can address. And if it is a political issue, somebody has to take up the charge and turn it into a cause and get people to follow them on that. Where should the leadership come from . Should it be coming from can i mean, i think youve sort of hinted at that readers, its not their responsibility. The leadership for this should come from where . I mean, i do think its readers responsibility. Not necessarily readers consumers responsibility to make virtuous choices at every turn, although i hope that they all shop at mitchell kaplans book shop and at politics prose in washington, d. C [applause] and all the other great independent bookstores that we have in this country, because i view those things as sort of central to our sense of community and the literary culture that we have. I think that readers should be asking questions of their politicians, and i think its politicians and, you know, there are a number of poll constitutions who profess to politicians who profess to care about antitrust and care about the consumers, and i think its up to us as citizens and reader citizens to try to enlist those politicians to talk up the cause. Right. And chris, this isnt an esoteric argument. It is about whether or not books continue to get published in the united states. And fact is that anybody who reads and likes to read has a stalk in this debate. Has a stake in this debate. Now, you can be as a reader perhaps passive about it, but i would suggest to you that every one of us who cares about the literary culture in this country, who cares about culture in the country has a real stake in this conversation. Right. And astrid taye hour, i think you taylor, i grow make the point that our cultural work is different than other types of work. Is to that so to that question of whether books are different, you would say, yes, they are . Yes. I would say that there are reasons to put special protections on cultural market and to think about other options for funding them like state subsidy. One thing ill say is that im not sure, you know, labor is that different in either case, and theres a big antiamazon labor argument to be made. Not just the people in the warehouses, theres an excellent article about how a lot of retirees are actually recruited by amazon to work for, you know, 11 an hour because they dont have orr options for livelihood. So i want there actually to be labor solidarity between artists and workers. I do think a little bit too much, sometimes it feels the conversation is amazon came and changed everything. The publishers are actually continuing behavior theyve been engaging in for a long time. Consolidation, the emphasis on blockbuster title, these are problems that Andre Shipman wrote about. And its publishers continuing a longstanding trend, and we see the same thing in journalism where there was a lot of consolidation in the industry, and when the internet came along and transformed the advertising market, they kind of started doing more of what they were already doing which was cutting expensive foreign bureaus and beat reporting. Theres a way in which the pressures have always been there are intensified by the digital transformation, and i think the response needs to be to support alternatives, to support independent publishers and support people who are doing a different kind of business. Andrew, id like you to pick up on that point. Its your view, i think, that publishers are in a way come licit in their own complicit in their own predicament because for so long when it came to innovation, when it came to finding their footing in the digital marketplace, they outsourced that, they left that all to amazon. I think thats true in a large case. I agree with everyone on the panel here. I think i just disagree a little bit about, you know, using antitrust as the weapon of choice here. I do think government has a role here, but i think the questions are more cultural, more constitutional in nature even than regulatory. So im afraid that the regulatory, that the antitrust process is not the right weapon of choice to have here. And youre right, publishers, i would say, have in our industry we have a very bad case of stockholm syndrome because, you know you have to tell people what that is. Well, you sort of begin to identify with your capp to have. Independent captor. Independent bookstores were having trouble. Barnes noble was encroaching. And then were defending barnes noble against amazon. The question that we really are addressing here is how do we pay authors and writers, how do we guarantee a robust reading future . And these are questions that go well beyond the scope of antitrust. So i would like to see us literally take these up in a much broader government even if its not the government, but a much broader cultural way than bringing the lawyers in the room. Once you bring in in the bring the lawyers in the room, the public conversation stops. Well, were having that conversation right now, and i want to ask you about the business and how it is different. And certainly, you want to stress that something thats different is that theres a perception that independent bookstores are dying, like, you know, leaves on the trees in the fall. But, in fact, theres been a resurgence recently, and i want to give you the opportunity to tell that good message about sort of surviving in the digital marketplace with real product in bricks and mortar stores. Yeah. The extraordinarily good news about our business is despite the challenges we face, were actually doing well. I was, i appreciated franks plug for books and books and politics prose, but there are a network literally of thousands of vibrant, independent bookstores who are providing an extraordinarily indispensable function in their communities everywhere across the united states. And the good news is those stores are doing better today than they were a decade ago. Now, hook, you know, owning and operating a small, independent Retail Business of any kind is a challenge. Weve got massive competition, and amazon does do what they do well. But what is clear is that there are millions if not tens of millions of American Consumers who value going to a local place , interacting with the people who operate that place in a way thats absolutely revolutionized our business. Some of you i i trust are familiar that a week from yesterday, the 29th of november, is Small Business saturday, an idea that American Express kind of cooked up a few years ago. Do you know that last year across the network of independent businesses not just bookstores Something Like 5. 7 billion was spent in independent buzzes that day businesses that day . So American Consumers are voting with their feet and reacting to the value of why it is they want to support locallyowned businesses. Bookstores have been in the forefront of that movement. So we are, in fact, hanging on. Consumers are responding, not without having to be smart entrepreneurs and reinventing our businesses and be able to to adapt including ways to talk advantage of technology. Including ways to sell a product online, to be able to communicate with our customers through social media. Weve got to do all those things in order to compete today, and the good news is that lots of stores are figuring that out. Yeah. Also, its terrorist astrid taylor, to take this subject from a focus on amazon to the broader picture which you discuss in your book which is the way that the web has created, i think you used the phrase a peasants kingdom, that the compensation which, you know, provided artists and musicians and writers in the predigital world has gone away in favor of, as an excuse with openness, a kind of contributory collective Publishing Media environment. Talk about how that feels as an artist, as a writer, as a filmmaker. And, again, to your point about the way that we could change the nature of the web, how you could improve that situation for creators. Yeah. I mean, i dont want to deny all of the amazing new opportunities that someone who wants to communicate ideas and get them out there. I think the architecture of the internet the fact that it is a manytomany communication channel, we all know that. We need to look ahead at the forces that are shaping it and start actively trying to protect the good things about, about this new communications platform. So, you know, i think all independent creators, all citizens should be really concerned about the Net Neutrality bait, you know, which is debate, you know, which is sort of fundamental to the sort of infrastructure. Its about all of us being able to access the internet which is sort of foundational. The thing is that instead of sort of creating this opportunity for everyone to contribute equally, this idea of the long tail where independent creators like myself would be able to find their audience, i think what were really seeing is the missing middle. The fact that there is a sort of increasing divide between regular people being able to participate and communicate online and then a sort of blockbuster, global phenomenon. So we see this in the Publishing Industry with the emphasis on, you know, blockbuster books and, you know, celebrity memoirs and all of this. Its a, its a problem thats exacerbated in the digital space. And so what id like to see is ways for us to bolster that missing middle. I think part of it is protecting our independent bookstores because, actually, they really enable people to discover a far wider range of titles even though amazon might have seemingly everything in its database. Actually, its been shown that brick and mortar bookstores produce a far more heterogeneous purchasing pattern for consumers. So i think protecting our institutions. Also articulating the fact that something that, you know, amazon is very critical of publishing, for example, because of its inefficiency. The fact that some books dont pay their own way, so the big books go, and the profits from those end up paying for a bunch of, you know, smaller, midsized titles that dont make money. Actually, thats actually a good model. Thats not something to be critical of. Thats the fact, you know, a cookbook that sells two million copies can fund some poetry or some literary nonfiction or some politics. Thats actually a value we want to, thats a model we want to keep. Thats not something we want to get rid of in favor of everything paying its own way. Around the tick late our values articulating our values and what we want. Right. You know, investigatorrive journalism, cultural criticism, those things have always had a hard time paying their own way, but its become even more difficult. Whats funny, as a consumer of literary biography, i always underline the places where you see what somebody got paid in 1930 for a new yorker article or a contribution to the new republic, and i go into those calculators that can calculate what 1930 dollars are into present value, and im always amazed that its basically i mean, people got paid a lot more in 1930 even if the sums were very fall. Couple that with the depression, the great depression. And couple that with the fact that writers tend to live in metropolitan areas which have been most affected by economic inequality, where real estate prices skyrocket and the cost of living is extremely high, so weve gotten kind of hit by this double whammy of the way that cities have changed and the way that our industries have changed. I mean, i do find myself kind of relying as an editor, increasingly relying on ive never gotten Knight Foundation money, although i wouldnt mind it. [laughter] relying on nonprofits to subsidize writers going to take trips to foreign places, just the expensive type of journalism that we need to do. But i, as a im extremely concerned by the fact that were, that writers are turning into kind of serfs and that its just in 1930 you could live in what was called, paul goodman called it decent poverty in a city. If you wanted to make the noble choice to become a novelist, to write a book that was experimental, that might not sell that much, you could still send your kid to a decent public school, and you could live in a fine apartment, and thats just not, thats just not possible anymore. Its not possible to live in decent can poverty as a writer anymore. And that has a lot to do with changing mores, but it makes me sad. And i think it all goes back to this fundamental point that if you look at our culture right now, go look at the New York Times bestseller list this morning. There are two real books on that bestseller book, im sorry to say. And were going to wake up five years from now, ten years from now and say what the hell just happened . Its like food. We, we consumed processed food for all, for so many years, and weve thought it maybe tasted pretty good and was convenient, and then we woke up and we said were fat and dying of heart disease. [laughter] and its going to happen with culture. Its happening right now with culture [applause] i would say thats fair, but we not only woke up and found ourselves not as well off as we thought we were, but we then chose to go to farmers markets and make choices that regardless of what thats, thats an elite thing. Well, but is it though . [applause] because what i was going to suggest, what i was going to suggest was that, you know, consumers make choices, and they knew where value lay, and weve transformed the marketplace. Theres greater choice than there was 20 years ago, even in a typical supermarket. That happened because consumers drove it. So i wonder whether you think consumers and authors and publishers can drive that kind of change in the publishing marketplace. Maybe to some degree. But i also look back at the history of publishing and the history of journalism, and elites, the elites who ran the businesses viewed themselves as having certain responsibilities to the culture that they were making money off of. And that momentum exist anymore. That doesnt exist anymore. And you looked at Time Magazine covers in the 1950s and all the sociologists and philosophers and composers who were on the cover there, that was a culture governed look, there were lots of problems with that elite, lots of problems with that elite. But there was still some responsibility that the people who ran publishing and ran journalism felt. And i still think that publishing has a sense of that type of responsibility. Publishing, for all its problems, publishes an extraordinary amount of literary fiction that may or may not provide massive profit margins. It still publishes an extraordinary amount of Investigative Journalism that may or might produce profit margins. So as astrid says, we will forgive them for publishing whatever kardashian book or whatever directive they want to publish if it helps subsidize the good stuff. Right. Well, andrew, you talk to publishers every day, and i wonder if you have any sense that they feel that same responsibility that frank was just talking about, or have they turned to sum my the simply profit model that they are being condemned for . The model of using the kardashian books is its a model they need to defend more and better, in a better way, i mean. But at the same time, i think i with technology we are on the cusp of a golden age for independent literature. I mean, you can get a book to market more cheaply, but we need to discuss, you know, broader solutions, i think, to how we fund artists, how we fund things that matter to us, our institutions, our bookstores, our libraries. Its a Big Conversation that we need to be having. Right now being an author, its a hot like the situation a lot like the situation in the country right now. If youre in the 1 , youre doing fine. Everyone else, not so much. And if youre in the middle, youre screwed. So i think we need to address how we prop up the middle here. Right. And oren, how do we do that . Is it business practice . Is it technology . Is it both probably . It is, and its important to point out that there are countries in the world that do figure out how to support cultural institutions. In a lot of western europe, in fact, government policy allows for a far more competitive cultural business and specifically in the Book Business. There are different kinds of agreements in other countries that absolutely stabilize the business and promote the culture. So i agree, andrew, that it doesnt only have to be Public Policy that enforces antitrust laws. I i think thats a piece of it because i dont think we can have blinders on as to pretend that that doesnt exist. But i think theres lots of other very positive things that the government can do to create a level Playing Field with regard to the way businesses operate. You know, in our business weve been fighting for a decade the ab userty absurdity that amazon is being subsidized in many states across the country by not having to collect sales tax because theyve cut some deal with some state legislatures to say well put your warehouse there, but we dont have to collect sales tax. Well, you know, you level the Playing Field. Consumers are buying that product. Why shouldnt consumers, why should government be subsidizing one group of businesses over another . So i think there are a lot of very constructive things that can be done shy of going to court and spending your life with a bunch of lawyers to help level the Playing Field with regard to the way the Book Business operates. Right. Frank foer, and then i want to conclude with astrid. I just wanted to make one point which is as somebody who is in the world of journalism, ive watched how expectations, theres a set of expectations we have as consumers about what we pay for with journalism which is that we expect it to be free. And which its just impossible. When you get end what you pay you get what you pay for. When you dont pay anything for the journalism that you read, you get gossipy drip thats pandering to mass audiences, and thats no good. So as consumers we have to, we have to fight our better selves, we have to fight our worse selves on that one and try to and pony up when its called to pony up. And i think when you look at books, thats what scares me about amazon and where this is pushing. Its that the possibility that we devalue books and devalue books by the actual price that we put on their dust jacket, that to me reflects values that we have as a society. And i do think that ultimately as consumers this is something that we do have to fight that selfinterested impulse in ourself. Right. Astrid taylor, a great place to end before we go the audience which is about value. To your point, a real, valid cultural democracy is not simply about a fight for attention, a contest for eyeballs, its something more important. Yeah. I think thats how weve been framing the digital landscape, everybody can throw their hat into the ring, a very low barrier to entry, and may the most viral succeed. And i think a cultural democracy has to support things we dont necessarily like that arent the cliquebased. You know, i think on consumer, on the analogy of food, thats something i actually go to at the end of my book, and i think the power of the purse is real, but i think its a social problem. We cant just sort of spend our way into a cultural utopia. The real problem is the subsidies the agricultural businesses get, and its just this you know, thats whats shaping the whole system. The media landscape is similar. Internet Companies Get many invisible subsidies from the tax issue you raised, the fact that so much of the Actual Technology was actually financed by the state, and the corporate sector reaps rewards. So i think we need to look at those subsidies that are going to the private sector and try to at least put some Public Interest conditions on them, if not taking back some of the proceeds, investing them in ways that enhance our culture. All all right. Well, i see we have a line for questions, so were going to turn to our audience to continue the discussion, which is what we wanted to do. If youd step up, and if you have a question for a particular member of the panel, let us know who its for. My names gayle. I dont want really have a question for any particular person. Weve been talking a lot about amazon, and im a very big supporter of the arts, of the authors, of dancers, of painters, etc. But when our local bookstores are being taken away from us, i mean, i live down in the avetura areas i have to drive 40 minutes to even just browse. How can i go ahead and support the authors and the different publishers when i dont have that ability given to me . Theres no, theres no place for me to go except for amazon. I mean, penguin and some of the other, other publishers that you guys were talking about that are merging together, i was always under the assumption that i could get any book that i wanted from whatever publisher if i went through amazon since i didnt have a bookstore to be able to go to. So how can i continue to support the local without having to go to the giant . So the question is, is there a work around . Do you ever go to books and books. Com . Do you know that books and books can sell you exactly the same books that amazon can . Look, our business isnt based on what we do online by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact is there cant be a bookstore in every community in the country. There are more of us today than there were a decade ago, but the fact is, is that, yes, there are communities that are underserved. Were trying to address that, but you can shop online at any bookstore, have access to exactly the same as long as you know their names. I mean, yes, most everybody here in miami knows books and books, but lets face it, you know, if youre not in miami and youre in a smaller area in florida or youre in texas and some other place in the country that doesnt have a books and books and they are out of borders, theres no more Barnes Nobles around, there was a kids bookstore that used to be in aventura within walking distance that i used to go to with my children, and theyre in college now. They are no longer. They havent been there in 15 years. If you dont know of a books and books thats in your community that you can go online, i mean, if you dont know a publisher that has, is, you know, of a favorite author that you know is being published by that publisher, i mean, can you go to that publisher online and buy a book from the publisher directly . Well, i think im ignorant in that regard, ill admit that. Go to book web. Org and look for a local publisher, sorry, local bookseller. I want to go to the next person in line for another question. You started out the panel talking about how ebooks have changed the landscape. I definitely agree thats true. How do you answer the argument that amazon can actually be a wonderful thing for new and smaller authors who can now selfpublish and get a much higher percentage of royalties than any of the publishers would ever give them . Well, thats the amazon argument, certainly. And its taken up by a lot of independent publishers and independent authors. Andrew, i think you recognized that point, that amazon has done a lot of good for writing, for authors and, by extension, publishers. I think thats absolutely true. And that is the amazon argument. My problem with amazon is that, you know, you can publish a book through amazon, and you can use their selfpublishing platforms, but, you know, if youre a library, its difficult to buy those books. Once you buy them on the kindle, you cant easily transfer them anywhere else. Theyre sort of a walled little garden there. But i would agree entirely that you can an author who has a book who wants to reach an audience can do so more easily now than ever before in history, and amazon has been a part of that. Whether our next question, please. Hi. My name is jacques laroche. I just want to reiterate a few things, some comments and a question. I want to reiterate what the first comments were said, both the question that she asked. Really like get to the point, the heart is that rational theory, rational Choice Theory doesnt really work. Like, there was an analogy that was about food, and when you look at, like, poor black and latino communities, we dont have access the food in certain to food in certain places, right . Thats another example of where this rational Choice Theory doesnt work. Like if you dont have a books and books, its easy to dismiss. Well, just go to books and books. Com or just go there. But the idea, the heart of that is there arent choices for people out there, right . And the other thing is, the question is, well, there was some stuff thrown around about culture and also the word consumer was thrown out like nine million times. And for us to change these problems, we have to change the culture. So what is it going to take for us to change the culture of calling us consumers . What comes to my mind when you say the word consumers, a pig at the trough just eating with no, like, sense of when to end and what waste theyre laying upon the land, right . So we are citizens [laughter] of this country. And id love for us to be able to look at us as that kind of individual. Well, astrid taylor, i think [applause] i think in your book the way that you urge us to consider there can be alternatives is, in fact, moving in that direction that he was speaking about. Right. I mean, you know, part of my book i felt like there was a lot of faith in the idea that the technology was going to make the transformation for us, and it was going to bring about a more participatory culture and that in a way were like, okay, just trust the technology. Let it run its course, and the old, the things we dont like about the old system are going to be broken up. And i think what were seeing is how much power the marketplace, the context, the economic context has over the technology and how it evolves. And so i feel like thats the deeper level we need to be talking about and addressing. Its not surprising to me in a world of increasing, you know, sickening inequal the city that what were seeing inequality that what were seeing is the internet kind of amplify the advantage of preexisting winners and broadening the gulf between the sort of haves and have nots on the level of, you know, money and attention. So, um, you know, i think what i aim to do in my book is just to say, okay, we need to actually challenge sort of faith in technology as something that can transform our social world. We need to look at the way that its shaped by these economic