Three Percent #168: The 6% Improvement
On this episode, Chad shares some interesting data about the number of books by women in translation before and after the creation of Women in Translation Month, Tom talks about the most recent Amazon controversy, they breakdown the National Translation Award for Prose Longlist (they’ll talk poetry in a future episode), and Chad shows that libraries are using a digital information system that’s less user-friendly than Edelweiss+.
(They also mention a post Chad wrote on Tanizaki’s In Black and White, which turns out to be way way funnier than one would expect.)
Also: Use the code PREORDER before midnight on September 15th to get 40% off of all nine of these forthcoming Open Letter titles.
This week’s music is “Night Owl” by Olivia Jean.
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You’ve undoubtedly seen this already, but CNN and other outlets picked up the story about Amazon shipping “The Testaments” early. Apparently Amazon is apologizing, claiming that the shipment was very limited, due purely to a technical error, that it won’t happen again, etc.
But the question remains: what sort of consequences could Amazon face if it decides to do this again?
Tom mentioned the affidavit he was repeatedly pestered about, and how it’s undoubtedly different from whatever Amazon’s lawyers had to sign. Still, I’m wondering if he could maybe talk a bit about what sort of potential penalties he had to agree to in order to.
Also as you mentioned, fines probably wouldn’t have much effect on a behemoth like Amazon. But what about say, refusing to supply them with new releases until after the official publication date? Could big publishers like PRH do such a thing without committing financial suicide?