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Originally Posted by Lemurion
I support authors - I think we all do.
I also very much dislike bullies; and in this situation it is Amazon that is being the bully. Macmillan gave Amazon options (neither to Amazon's liking) and 60 days warning. That was plenty of time for Amazon to try to suggest alternatives or at least make a counter-offer. Instead they opted for the nuclear option and removed everything Macmillan sells - paper and electronic alike.
This was Amazon's action and this hurt readers and this hurt authors. Books have vanished from peoples' wish lists. People who just discovered authors like Robert Jordan can't buy the next book in the series from Amazon.
Macmillan's pricing scheme and model may be all wrong, I don't know. What I do know is Amazon's response has permanently tarnished them in my eyes and that behavior means I can't consider them the good guys.
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This is extremely tortured logic. Macmillan is free to twist Amazon's arm over pricing, but Amazon has no recourse but to take it? Let's get real here. It's called negotiating and Amazon's leverage comes not so much from it's install base of Kindles, which Macmillan has no regard for anyway, but from being the source for books (p & e-books) on the internet. Should Amazon negotiate a contract with one hand behind it's back? Why should they not use the most powerful lever they have? Macmillan has a legal monopoly on content and they want to flex those muscles by withholding e-books for months from the publishing date so that they can increase their profits on hardcovers; I dislike it, but I understand it. I haven't heard their authors decrying the income lost on those e-book sales. When Amazon turns the tap off for a weekend all of a sudden they are up in arms? Give me a break!
Frankly, I think we in the e-book community should get behind Amazon, even if you don't buy e-books from them, as they have forced other major players like B&N and Sony to lower prices to compete. They made $9.99 the price point to compete at, and now they are going to be straight jacketed in pricing to what the publisher demands. If publishers want to raise prices they need to provide greater value, be it through better edited and produced e-books, more favorable release dates, extra content, etc. Publishers don't have any right to stay in business, and if they continue on such an anti-consumer path they will price themselves right out of business.