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The Publishers are villainizing Amazon because Amazon took the time to focus on building up an e-book store that made people want to buy e-books and an e-reader.
Sony was Amazon's first real competition and the Sony bookstore sucked. Truth be told, it isn't all that great today. Amazon came on the scene and realized that the only way to sell an e-reader was to sell e-books. They asked, demanded, negotiated, with the Publishers to make the e-book available the same day as the hardback. I am guessing that the Publishers said sure because they didn't think anyone would actually buy the e-book. Amazon discounted best sellers to $9.99 because it was an attractive price point. People paid an insane amount for Kindles (I got in on the K1 after the first price cut when the Kindle was only $349) and started buying e-books. Publishers appeared to be shocked that people would pay that much for an e-reader and then actually buy the books.
Eventually BN entered the game with the Nook. By the time BN got into the game, Amazon was well established and people thought of the Kindle as the E Reader. I think the K2 had been released so there was no removable battery and memory card (both on the K1) which a small group of people jumped on. They really liked the library lending and that you could shop at multiple stores. The problem was that the BN store was not that great and the Sony store still sucked.
At some point in time the Kobo and IPad came out. By this time, e-books were outselling Hardback books and, I think, Paperbacks. Publishers were freaking out because they had no idea how to deal with e-books and their profit margin on an e-book was less then it was on a hardback book. Customers had not responded well when they tried to stagger the hardback and e-book release (I know that there are several books I didn't buy because it was not available on release date and it pissed me off that the Publisher was screwing with me).
Apple wanted to open IBooks but knew it would lose to Amazon because of Amazons price point and the size of Amazons selection and through the Publishers an illegal life preserver called Agency Publishing.
Through all of this, Amazon is still the largest e-book store and the Kindle is selling like gang busters. People on this board and other boards that I read have admitted that they buy books from Amazon for their Sony and Nooks because those books are not available in EPub and they convert them to be able to read them. This tells me that the other bookstores have had several years to build themselves up so that they are competitive with Amazon and have not been able to do so even with the Publishers colluding with Apple.
The Publishers have lost money because of this deal. The Publishers made more money per e-book when Amazon set the price and Amazon lost money on all of the best sellers. Authors lost money because the Publishers were not making as much so their royalty checks were smaller. Amazon made money because it had to sell the books at a higher price point. Amazon launched programs that have benefited Indie authors that EPub users hate, like the exclusive publish program, but which seems to have helped more then a few Indie authors.
So what is the moral of this story?
I have no clue. I know that Amazon set out to build a successful e-reader and e-book store and did. Even with the collusion between the Publishers and Apple, Amazon still has an insanely successful bookstore that is making more money now then it was before Agency Pricing and Kindles are selling well. There are some new e-readers out there but their bookstores still do not match Amazons. I have no idea what I am suppose to take away from this.
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