[soulsteelgray]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

She could have sold the books trhough Amazon, BN, Sony, Kobo (I see that they did not work a deal with Kobo by the way), and other stores without giving up any of her rights. There was no need to sell through her own store other than her desire to be more controlling then needed.

Originally Posted by soulsteelgray

Was it a little extreme to have Pottermore be the go-to source to purchase the Harry Potter books? Sure; after all, Reznor's post-Interscope works are available on iTunes and Amazon. But Reznor also hasn't set up something the likes of Pottermore where it's ostensibly supposed to be the Harry Potter site.

Also, who's to say that the prices wouldn't be even higher if the publishers had retained control over the ebooks? We'll never know, but I think it's a fine deal for the ebooks to sell for less than MSRP on their paperback counterparts--even if you can get them for less on Amazon because they're discounting them off the wholesale price anyways. I'm more willing to pay for an ebook through an author's direct pricing model than a publisher's pricing model. Have we forgotten the horrors of the agency model already?

Originally Posted by whitearrow

Yes... because what I really want to do every time I want to buy a book is go to a new web site and set up a new account and enter name, email, home address, credit card details, and come up with a new password that I have to keep track of. That makes so much more sense for me as a consumer.

Notice I did not support authors solely distributing their ebooks through direct sell. Rather, what I advocated was allowing authors to choose how to distribute their work without publisher interference. Some authors may want to only do direct sell, others may be a little freer with third parties. I leave it up to the authors to decide, even at the cost of consumer ease, because it's their work.