Whether or not I agree with Macmillan’s choice of prices, I do think they have a right to decide how to price their products. And honestly, I can’t evaluate their pricing structure until I know more about the product—how they plan to license it (since these days not everyone seems to think you should be able to “buy” an e-book outright, or agree on what that would mean), what you get with it, when which prices would kick in, etc. But if I don’t like their prices, I have a perfect solution: I won’t buy their books! And if enough people agree that they’re overpriced, Macmillan will end up having to drop their prices in order to sell books.

Someone in one of the many articles I read on this online yesterday opined that the problem with Amazon’s approach to all this is that they basically wanted the benefits of being both a wholesaler & a retailer, rolled into one. When they didn’t immediately get it, they took the petulant bully approach of saying, “if we can’t do it my way, I’m taking my ball and going home.” That hardly seems like a good solution, and it’s hard to read that as anything but Amazon trying to intimidate Macmillan into falling into line: “do what we want, exactly how we want, or we’ll cut you off.” Ugh. Sure, I want cheaper e-books, but I don’t think that’s how I want to get them.

– c.

This is becoming so common in just about everything these days. I can only guess its one of the byproducts of information overload, and it extends to about a million subjects. I really miss when both sides could be wrong and right at the same time.

It’s business. Business is dickish by its nature, but that’s no more true today than it was last week.

-Rob D.

Another good one, by Tobias Buckell (long) –

http://www.sfwa.org/2010/01/why-my-books-are-no-longer-available-on-amazon-com/