Amazon One, Publisher's Zero

I think it is fitting that the first blog post on this site be about the debacle between Amazon.com and Macmillan. A link to the letter from Macmillan is here bottom line, Amazon wants to keep E book prices under $10 each, which I agree with. Macmillan wants to raise e book prices to between $5 - $15 each, for business viability reasons.

First, I dont think e books should ever cost over $10 each, Amazon has said forget you, this is my website, I'll sell it for what I want, and they are keeping the prices LOWER for the consumers sake. Wal-mart does this all of the time, they keep prices low to keep their marketplace dominance. Amazon has said you either follow our guidelines, Or else, Macmillan chose or else. Macmillan will lose their CEO long before Amazon loses a sale. Reader's if they are fans will try to find the authors, but most readers's will just look for a different book. Macmillan loses, and the Writer's lose. If the issue is that MacMillan is having financial solvency issues, there are other ways to increase their profitability without increasing the sales price, or by not raising the price by 50%. Amazon said, "look this is our business, this is what we do, this is who we are, we are protecting OUR interests and we will not raise the price because our consumers will not like or allow that. " As a reader I respect what Amazon has done. I really and truly do. I respect it even if I don't like it. I respect Amazon more for this move, and it will be interesting to see what MacMillan and other publisher's do because of this.