Jeff Bezos

Amazon was so ruthless with small book publishers that its pursuit of new, more favourable contract terms with them was “sadistic,” according to Brad Stone’s books about the company, “
The Everything Store.”

Basically, small publishers leaped at the chance to get better distribution through Amazon in the early 2000s. But once they became dependent on Amazon for sales, Amazon turned the screws, Stone claims, demanding longer pay periods and lower discounts. Publishers who didn’t “pay to play” would get unfavorable treatment on Amazon, making their books more expensive and harder to find.

CEO Jeff Bezos regarded the publishing business as a “sickly gazelle,” Stone writes, according to a review in the New York Times:

The company’s relationship with those publishers was called the Gazelle Project after Mr. Bezos said Amazon “should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” A joke, perhaps, but such an aggressive one that Amazon’s lawyers demanded the Gazelle Project be renamed the Small Publishers Negotiation Program.

Mr. Stone writes that Randy Miller, an Amazon executive in charge of a similar program in Europe, “took an almost sadistic delight in pressuring book publishers to give Amazon more favourable financial terms.” Mr. Miller would move their books to full price, take them off the recommendation engine or promote competing titles until he got better terms out of them, the book says.

“I did everything I could to screw with their performance,” Mr. Miller told the writer. The program was called Pay to Play until the Amazon lawyers changed it to Vendor Realignment.

David Ryder/Getty ImagesJeffrey P. Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com.

It was perhaps inevitable that Amazon would have a rocky relationship with book publishers. Publishers are analog, Amazon is digital. Publishers are New York, Amazon is Seattle. The large publishers traditionally did not know much about their customers, and did not really care. Amazon knew a lot about customers and made the most of it.

As for smaller houses, they were among Amazon’s most fervent early supporters. Amazon talked a lot in the beginning about leveling the playing field for small publishers. It did, but then things went south.

Brad Stone’s new book, “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon,” vividly documents just how troubled the Amazon/publisher relationship became by about 2004. The retailer’s critics, who worry about a culture where Amazon has eliminated all gatekeepers except itself, will not be reassured by this book.

In negotiations with larger publishers, Mr. Stone writes, Amazon kept demanding more as it got bigger: steeper discounts, longer periods to pay and better shipping. Mr. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, then turned up the heat on the most vulnerable publishers — those most dependent on Amazon.

The company’s relationship with those publishers was called the Gazelle Project after Mr. Bezos said Amazon “should approach these small publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle.” A joke, perhaps, but such an aggressive one that Amazon’s lawyers demanded the Gazelle Project be renamed the Small Publishers Negotiation Program.

Mr. Stone writes that Randy Miller, an Amazon executive in charge of a similar program in Europe, “took an almost sadistic delight in pressuring book publishers to give Amazon more favorable financial terms.” Mr. Miller would move their books to full price, take them off the recommendation engine or promote competing titles until he got better terms out of them, the book says.

“I did everything I could to screw with their performance,” Mr. Miller told the writer. The program was called Pay to Play until the Amazon lawyers changed it to Vendor Realignment.

Even some Amazon employees were literally sickened by how they had to behave, Mr. Stone writes. One book group employee said he had post-traumatic stress disorder for a year after quitting. Another was fired after he said it would be unethical to revisit a contract that had already been negotiated with Oxford University Press.

Nearly a decade later, Amazon’s hold on the bookselling market, both print and digital, is much greater than it was in those early days. An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on Mr. Stone’s book, which was written with the cooperation of Mr. Bezos.