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kacir · 01-31-2010, 01:00 PM

EDIT at the end of article
I am afraid the situation is more complicated than our new member eBook Resistance realizes.

macmillan NEVER sold their bestsellers in e-book form for $9.99. It was Amazon.com that sold the books with the loss. So instead of selling the book for the 20 bucks list price they sold it for $9.99. Normally, Amazon.com sells an ordinary e-book for its list price - $20 (just a nice round example, not representative value, so I do not have to do any complex computations), keeps 35% and pays the publisher the remaining $13. If a book is on the New York Times bestseller list, Amazon.com sells it to you for $9.99, and pays the remaining $3.01 out of their own pocket. They do that to become a monopoly so they can dictate any prices they wish gouging readers and publishers alike.
What macmillan did here is they refused to let Amazon.com to sell the books at the loss.
So macmillan did not come suddenly with an idea that a bestseller should cost 15 bucks. They always sold the e-books for that price, if not more.

macmillan executives are scared of all this new e-book fashion, because it means that they will have to change. And instead of trying to use the new technology to their advantage they are trying to turn the clock back. I do not think they can put the Genie back to the bottle.

EDIT:
There is nice article, explaining the point of view of macmillan here:
http://www.publishersmarketplace.com...n_30jan10.html
The article was referred to in another thread about Amazon macmillian war here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71750

01-31-2010, 01:00 PM	#15
kacir Wizard Posts: 3,463 Karma: 10684861 Join Date: May 2006 Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20	EDIT at the end of article I am afraid the situation is more complicated than our new member eBook Resistance realizes. macmillan NEVER sold their bestsellers in e-book form for $9.99. It was Amazon.com that sold the books with the loss. So instead of selling the book for the 20 bucks list price they sold it for $9.99. Normally, Amazon.com sells an ordinary e-book for its list price - $20 (just a nice round example, not representative value, so I do not have to do any complex computations), keeps 35% and pays the publisher the remaining $13. If a book is on the New York Times bestseller list, Amazon.com sells it to you for $9.99, and pays the remaining $3.01 out of their own pocket. They do that to become a monopoly so they can dictate any prices they wish gouging readers and publishers alike. What macmillan did here is they refused to let Amazon.com to sell the books at the loss. So macmillan did not come suddenly with an idea that a bestseller should cost 15 bucks. They always sold the e-books for that price, if not more. macmillan executives are scared of all this new e-book fashion, because it means that they will have to change. And instead of trying to use the new technology to their advantage they are trying to turn the clock back. I do not think they can put the Genie back to the bottle. EDIT: There is nice article, explaining the point of view of macmillan here: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com...n_30jan10.html The article was referred to in another thread about Amazon macmillian war here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71750 Last edited by kacir; 01-31-2010 at 01:42 PM.