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Originally Posted by kennyc
Someone certainly is since it has not happened yet.
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You're both speculating. That said....
Macmillan has minimal control over pricing at this time. Under ordinary circumstances, they set an ebook cover price and watch retailers slash the price; sometimes methodically, sometimes at random, sometimes not at all. E.g. Tor might price an ebook at $12, expecting Amazon to set the price at $10, and get castigated by readers for its cover pricing.
I might add, reducing prices as demand falls is basic economics. There is absolutely no reason why a publisher would
not reduce prices as time goes on, and the demand for a given title slows down. If they were completely insensible to economics, that's how they operated, they would never issue paperbacks.
In fact, it's entirely possible that giving Macmillan more control over ebook pricing will actually encourage them to loosen up a bit. For example, they won't have to delay the release of an ebook release, as they ebook won't be priced so low as to utterly eviscerate hardcover sales.
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Originally Posted by kennyc
Please feel free to try and convince me MacMillan is doing anything good for consumers or authors because they are not.
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Since you seem to be operating primarily based on cynicism rather than economics, I'm not sure that is possible.
Anyway....
Macmillan's job is to sell books, and that's about it. I'll leave it to you to decide if that is or is not "good for consumers."
And what's Amazon's role? To defend consumers? To protect your rights? Hardly. A few weeks ago, plenty of people were castigating Amazon for trying to corner the ebook market, for using DRM, for not using ePub, for deleting books off of users' devices, and a whole host of other evils.
I.e. Amazon's role here is nearly identical to Macmillan's. They both want to sell books, and they both want control over pricing. I for one don't view either side as "evil" or morally suspect on this basis, it's just the nature of the business. In a year or so, I doubt anyone other than top execs at publishers and retailers will even have a reason to care about all this mess.