Writers Tricks of the Trade VOLUME 7, ISSUE 3 | Page 23

D ON ’ T I MMEDIATELY T RUST M AINSTREAM S ITES
ON P UBLISHING S TORIES
P OSTED ON M AY 24, 2017 BY J ANE F RIEDMAN ON https://janefriedman.com/blog
N OTE THAT THE FOLLOWING MATERIAL IS ADAPTED FROM T HE H OT S HEET , THE
SUBSCRIPTION EMAIL NEWSLETTER SHE RUNS WITH JOURNALIST P ORTER A NDERSON
J ANE F RIEDMAN
Over the last month, there have been a couple publishing stories receiving wide
play across mainstream news sites such as The Guardian, Vox, Huffington Post, and
others. While such outlets may be respectable and have the ability to get most stories
right, in the publishing industry, two problems often come into play:
A lack of understanding of industry statistics—and an inability to put them in their
proper context
Knee-jerk judgment regarding anything Amazon does
.)
Amazon’s Buy-Box Policy Change for New Books
S UMMER 2017
A lawn-mower vendor or a light bulb manufacturer could have told you this was probably coming. In every
W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE TRADE
P AGE third-party
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part of Amazon’s far-flung retail operation,
vendors “compete with Amazon”—that’s Amazon’s
own language—to be the default sellers of items in a product’s buy box—the box that contains the purchase
button and indicates the seller and purchase price.