Amazon Response

Amazon posted a response to the reaction of pulling MacMillan's books. While I'm not convinced on what the price for e-books should be, I do think that the market should decide. What is expensive to one person, could be reasonable to another and cheap to someone else. A major fan of an author is more than willing to pay a few more dollars to read the e-book version when it's released than waiting several months for the price to drop. The choice is theirs. Like everything else in a free market society, the price paid on newly released items are ALWAYS more expensive than the price on that same item months later. This happens in every industry, whether it's books, cars, clothing, movies. It's expected. Amazon makes it sound as if charging more for a new release is somehow duping the readers. If the readers don't like the price, they don't have to pay it. They can wait and buy it cheaper, like they do with every other item in every other industry. This is not about looking out for the customer, it's about a threat to Amazon's market share on e-books.

John Scalzi wrote an absolutely beautiful summary of this past weekend. I laughed from point 2 through the end. You've got to read it!

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/all-the-many-ways-amazon-so-very-failed-the-weekend/


Below is the quote from Publisher's Weekly:

Amazon Answers: "Ultimately....We Will Have to Capitulate"

Could publishers have triumphed so quickly with their strategy to use Apple's entry into the market to move to an agency model for selling ebooks? (Note that the etailer says "ultimately." Immediately after posting this "announcement," disabled Macmillan buy buttons had not been restored yet.) Early Sunday evening, The Amazon Kindle team has just posted this to a forum on their site:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

As reported previously here, other major publishers do in fact have plans for pursuing "the same route," so this may be just the first chapter.