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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
If a couple of large-ish publishers just aren't available through Amazon, that could be the breakpoint for Amazon's near-monopoly on online bookselling.
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I doubt it. At this point, MacMillan almost certainly needs Amazon more than the other way around.
On a separate note, it seems to me that everyone except a leading retailer's customers are equally unhappy with whoever is on top. In the pre-Internet days, B&N was the big dog / Big Bad -- e.g. the industry was livid when B&N wanted to buy Ingram. Similarly, the music industry is miserable about Apple dominating legal music downloads.
Not that Amazon is perfect; but that whoever supplants them isn't likely to be any different or palatable. (And yes, it does seem to me that the human tendency is to gravitate to a single source for this kind of thing.)
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Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I think Amazon's shooting themselves in the foot with this one. Instead of intimidating Macmillan, they're scaring their own customers, who are getting a flash of, "wow... if there's a problem with Amazon, where am I gonna buy stuff?" And Amazon kept its market share by keeping people from ever asking that question.
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Maybe, but if they didn't whack Macmillan in the knees, all the major publishers were likely to demand the same terms from Amazon as they've gotten with Apple.