[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by Roger Slater

Would it be fair to your authors for you to withdraw all your books from Amazon, even though that's the main outlet where books are sold? I think the answer is obviously no.

I'm not sure the answer is obvious, though such a publisher should make the Amazon stance clear to authors. When an ethical objection to a distributor arises after an agreement with an author has been made (as is presumably the case in this instance with most of Barefoot Muse Press's agreements) the issue is complex. The answer is not obvious.

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

Can a business refuse to sell its product (as long as that product is not harmful or controlled by statute or regulations) to any given group or to an individual because of a personal prejudice against said group or individual?

Anna and others see this as a question of ethics, of supporting an individual who, in their eyes, has been mistreated. To characterize it as "a personal prejudice" is hardly fair.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Max, your phrase "in their eyes" constitutes a personal prejudice. There has been no legal decision about whether or not any injustice was done.

I hope you read this:

http://media.oregonlive.com/business...igned%20PO.pdf

[Max Goodman]

Sam, I respect you enough to follow a link when you bring it to my attention. This one led to a court document related to a case brought against a bakery for refusing to make a cake for a gay couple. I'm sure everyone reading this thread can form their own opinions about the similarities and dissimilarities of the two situations.

[Richard Meyer]

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

Hypothetically, let's just say that this is in the absence of any written contract between the publisher and the author, a situation that seems fairly common with small presses.

Although I'm not addressing the main point and thrust of your question, I find the above statement quite curious and even puzzling. My book publishing experience is very new and very limited, having my first book of poetry published in September 2015 by a very small independent publishing company in California.

During my extensive communications with the publisher that occurred while preparing the manuscript for print, a written contract was one of the first items addressed.

In one of her email letters to me, my publisher wrote, "Just as good fences make good neighbors, contracts make good publishing relationships." And I might add that I was given a very generous contract. I imagined that every published book had a signed contract attached to it. Apparently I was woefully mistaken. A clear and precise publishing contract, it seems, would have prevented the situation being raised in this thread.

Richard

[R. S. Gwynn]

The bakery refused to sell the cake because of personal prejudices against the potential purchasers. This was in violation of the law, and the bakery was fined a large sum.

If a book publisher refuses to sell its books to a potential purchaser because of personal prejudices against said purchaser, then the situations are similar, even if no statute covers this situation. It does appear to violate any kind of tacit agreement with the author, whose intellectual property is being sold. The fact that the author can personally buy the books from the publisher and have them delivered or physically take them to the point of sale seems to me beside the point. Suppose the author does not plan to attend the event but is invited to sell his or her books there. Does that mean that the burden fairly falls on the author to make the books available if the publisher, for whatever reason, declines to ship books to the event?

It is well established in our laws that a provider of goods or services cannot selectively refuse to provide those goods or services to any potential client or customer. If you can think of any exceptions to this, I'll be glad to hear them. I can't think of any.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Richard, I fully agree with you on the point about contracts. You were very lucky in your publisher; many aren't so scrupulous. My own contracts with trade publishers and university presses have been very precise. My experiences with small presses haven't been the same. I suspect that most of us don't press issues of distribution, review copies, and royalties too hard simply because we want our books available. Royalties especially don't seem to matter much because they're usually so small that it's hardly worth the effort to try to collect them. There was once an organization called something like SPLM (Small Press and Literary Magazines?) that tried to promote some publishing standards, but I haven't heard of it in years. The advent of Internet publishing has also muddied the waters considerably.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

The bakery refused to sell the cake because of personal prejudices against the potential purchasers. This was in violation of the law, and the bakery was fined a large sum.

Neither you nor I can claim to be lawyers, but you're right: that was an incident of prejudice against the purchasers. The two instances are completely different.

There are lots of items home depot sells, but my local home depot decides not to carry. So I have to order them online, and have them delivered to my house.

Besides, not so many years ago, many publishers did decide not to sell on amazon any more. They made this decision without notifying any of their authors. Now, it's true, within months they knuckled under and amazon won, but the reasons for that were strictly commercial, not ethical.

>"It is well established in our laws that a provider of goods or services cannot selectively refuse to provide those goods or services to any potential client or customer."

This is indeed the case if the potential customer is part of a protected class. On the other hand, could I refuse to sell to redheads? I don't know the answer to that one. But it doesn't matter, because the situations aren't equivalent.

But this leads to another question: where's the harm? I can't imagine we're talking big numbers. But does the bookstore get a cut of each book sold? Do other entities also get a percentage of each book sale? If there's no harm, or if the harm is vanishingly small, it seems that discussing the issue openly actually leads to more reputational harm, for all involved, than anything else.

Best,

Bill

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

There was once an organization called something like SPLM (Small Press and Literary Magazines?) that tried to promote some publishing standards, but I haven't heard of it in years.

Is this what you meant? CLMP: https://www.clmp.org/ It's the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. They seem to still be around...

Best,

Bill

[Max Goodman]

Originally Posted by R. S. Gwynn

It is well established in our laws that a provider of goods or services cannot selectively refuse to provide those goods or services to any potential client or customer. If you can think of any exceptions to this, I'll be glad to hear them.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/boyco...ry?id=38367656

Whether, in the eyes of the law, Anna's stance is more like a musician cancelling a concert in protest or the bakery situation you cite I don't know (or care--ethics and the law often conflict--otherwise there would rarely be reason to change laws). I also don't know whether Kim Bridgford was unfairly treated and I've been careful not to suggest that I have an opinion about that. But, particularly here where so many of us are so supportive of WCU, when an opposing viewpoint is unfairly characterized, I feel it deserves to be defended.

I see a big difference between "I won't work with you because I feel you've treated someone unfairly" and a personal prejudice. It certainly is nothing like the case you cite of "I won't work with you because you're gay."

[R. S. Gwynn]

"Whether, in the eyes of the law, [her] stance is more like a musician cancelling a concert in protest or the bakery situation you cite I don't know (or care--ethics and the law often conflict--otherwise there would rarely be reason to change laws)."

Max, you raise interesting questions, but you forget the author(s) caught in the middle of this situation.

How would you feel, say, if you, as an author, learned via a public announcement that your publisher would not send your books to an upcoming book fair in another state because the publisher (let's assume that's one person) felt that the former director of the book fair had been dismissed unfairly? You knew about the dismissal, perhaps, but knew nothing about the reasons for its happening. Your main concern is having your books available for sale. Now you have to buy them directly from the publisher and pay to have them shipped to the event, contrary to the practice the publisher has employed earlier in shipping book orders to other events. You also have to arrange the details of consignment sales yourself and, at the end of the event, arrange to have any remaining copies shipped back to you, at your expense. Wouldn't you be miffed at such an arrangement? I would.