Very interesting letter! It is amazing how open and public this whole thing is, I suppose that is just part of the internet age.
I am now definitively on Amazon's side. I feel like Amazon is trying to defend eBooks from stupidity at this point.
I don't want lame "deep windowing of titles". One of the big draws for me is the convenience of eBooks. I have bought _WAY_ more books in the past year than I had in the previous 10 years...all because it was easy to do and was priced fairly reasonably. It still feels a bit off to pay 10 bucks for an eBook when they don't have any physical production costs. It really bothers me when really old books are priced crazy high, but I just don't buy those ones.
I can't help but think that Amazon realizes that it is so easy to find pirate books that if 'deep windowing' were to become common, many people would turn to piracy to avoid the delay. Not having them available right away would be practically an invitation to pirate to many people.
I am not sure that pricing the eBooks at $15 would drive people to pirate, but I am sure it wouldn't help. I can say for sure it would have a chilling effect on my eBook purchases and that I would buy less books. I hate the idea of upping the price of eBooks, but I do think it is less stupid than trying to put in artificial time windows on releases.