Whether or not you think flooding someone's inbox is an effective advocacy tactic, Amazon may not have used the best evidence to criticize writers that back Hachette's position. It cites 1984 creator George Orwell as saying that publishers should conspire together to keep costs artificially high. Well, that's not really true. As the New York Times notes, Amazon is quoting Orwell out of context -- he was in favor of cheaper books (like paperbacks), but contended that they would still hurt the industry's income. He also disputed the notion that lower prices will lead to people buying more books, as Amazon argues. Orwell believed that customers would simply roll the savings into other forms of entertainment, like movies; that's good for both readers and multi-talented media giants like Amazon, but not authors and publishers. While he wasn't completely right about pricing -- paperbacks did spark a literary renaissance, after all -- the issue isn't necessarily as clear-cut as Amazon makes it out to be.

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