[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Or stick it with a click-bait misleading headline:

Here is the Wall Street Journal headline:

Amazon Defends Its Stance Against Hachette

Here is the headline from The Australian:

Amazon defends e-book stance

And here is the heart of said article:

Amazon has been criticised for its negotiating tactics, including attacks from some Hachette authors whose careers have benefited from Amazon sales. But in an interview, Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of Kindle content, indicated the retailer was willing to suffer some damage to its reputation and was simply doing what is “in the long-term interest of our customers”. . . .

"We were fighting for what we thought was right for consumers, and the same is true here," said Mr. Grandinetti.

How the heck is that not a defense of Amazon's stance against Hachette?

As for the substance, what would be the most likely explanation for why Kindle Paperwhite prices at the US office supply chains are virtually identical with those on Amazon.com, without the occasional deep discount seen on most other products? And when Staples or OfficeMax do discount Kindles, the discount is more often that you get a gift card than an actual deep price reduction. On its face, it looks awfully like the minimum advertised AKA agency pricing preferred by those dreaded big publishers, as well as Apple. But, hey, this is the great Amazon, who puts the customer above all others, so my suspicions must be a mere fantasy.