The Eakins Press Foundation is a not-for-profit educational and charitable private operating foundation whose purpose is the advancement of literature and art through excellence of presentation. The Foundation’s program supports and encourages the craftsmanship and art of authors, artists, painters and photographers, both unknown and of established reputation, whose efforts forward or are relevant to the vision, integrity and teaching of Thomas Eakins, the American painter for whom the Foundation is named. Publications include neglected masterpieces of literature and art having contemporary pertinence, and classic and contemporary works that are commercially unfeasible and would otherwise not have been published with the quality of presentation the work deserves.

The works of the Eakins Press Foundation are selected from classic and contemporary literature and art relevant to values currently embattled. In content and form they defend human excellence. Together they suggest that advanced technology is a tool and not a substitute for intelligence, that modernity need not outmode humane capacity. The symbol of the Eakins Press Foundation is a leaf and a hand, signifying nature and the works of man as counterparts. Man is and remains a creature of nature capable of cultivation, and art is the measure of his life. – Leslie George Katz, Founder of the Eakins Press Foundation

The Eakins Press Foundation is a not-for-profit educational and charitable private operating foundation whose purpose is the advancement of literature and art through excellence of presentation. The Foundation’s program supports and encourages the craftsmanship and art of authors, artists, painters and photographers, both unknown and of established reputation, whose efforts forward or are relevant to the vision, integrity and teaching of Thomas Eakins, the American painter for whom the Foundation is named. Publications include neglected masterpieces of literature and art having contemporary pertinence, and classic and contemporary works that are commercially unfeasible and would otherwise not have been published with the quality of presentation the work deserves.

The works of the Eakins Press Foundation are selected from classic and contemporary literature and art relevant to values currently embattled. In content and form they defend human excellence. Together they suggest that advanced technology is a tool and not a substitute for intelligence, that modernity need not outmode humane capacity. The symbol of the Eakins Press Foundation is a leaf and a hand, signifying nature and the works of man as counterparts. Man is and remains a creature of nature capable of cultivation, and art is the measure of his life. – Leslie George Katz, Founder of the Eakins Press Foundation

The Eakins Press Foundation is a not-for-profit educational and charitable private operating foundation whose purpose is the advancement of literature and art through excellence of presentation. The Foundation’s program supports and encourages the craftsmanship and art of authors, artists, painters and photographers, both unknown and of established reputation, whose efforts forward or are relevant to the vision, integrity and teaching of Thomas Eakins, the American painter for whom the Foundation is named. Publications include neglected masterpieces of literature and art having contemporary pertinence, and classic and contemporary works that are commercially unfeasible and would otherwise not have been published with the quality of presentation the work deserves.

The works of the Eakins Press Foundation are selected from classic and contemporary literature and art relevant to values currently embattled. In content and form they defend human excellence. Together they suggest that advanced technology is a tool and not a substitute for intelligence, that modernity need not outmode humane capacity. The symbol of the Eakins Press Foundation is a leaf and a hand, signifying nature and the works of man as counterparts. Man is and remains a creature of nature capable of cultivation, and art is the measure of his life. – Leslie George Katz, Founder of the Eakins Press Foundation

Amazon, Publishers, and Readers

Peter Kayafas

In the current fight between Amazon and the publisher Hachette over the price of ebooks and print-on-demand rights, Amazon’s tactics are awful, the worst possible in fact: They are denying readers access to books, removing pre-order options and slowing delivery of titles published by Hachette. Amazon’s image as a business committed to connecting readers to books is shredded by this sort of hostage-taking. The obvious goal for readers in should be to punish anyone using us as leverage.

This skirmish will end, though, and when it does, we’ll be left with the larger questions of what the landscape of writing and reading will look like in the English-speaking world. On those questions, we should be backing Amazon, not because different principles are at stake, but because the same principle — Whose actions will benefit the reader? — leads to different conclusions. Many of the people rightly enraged at Amazon’s mistreatment of customers don’t understand how their complaint implicates the traditional model of publishing and selling as well.

Some of the strongest criticism of Amazon comes from authors most closely aligned with the prestigious parts of the old system, many of those complaints appearing as reviews of “The Everything Store”, Brad Stone’s recent book on Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Steve Coll, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, wrote one such, “Citizen Bezos,” in The New York Review of Books:


At least two qualities distinguished Bezos from other pioneers of e-commerce and help to explain his subsequent success. The first was his gargantuan vision. He did not see himself merely chipping away at Barnes & Noble’s share of retail book sales; he saw himself developing one of the greatest retailers in history, on the scale of Sears Roebuck or Walmart. Secondly, Bezos focused relentlessly on customer service — low prices, ease of use on his website, boundless inventory, and reliable shipping. To this day, Amazon is remarkably successful at pleasing customers.

Some of the strongest criticism of Amazon comes from authors most closely aligned with the prestigious parts of the old system, many of those complaints appearing as reviews of “The Everything Store”, Brad Stone’s recent book on Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Steve Coll, Dean of the Columbia Journalism School, wrote one such, “Citizen Bezos,” in The New York Review of Books.

TAGS

Amazon, publishers, readers, e-commerce