Amazon and MacMillan start to make up
The e-book price wars continue, but it looks like at least one publisher is showing some tendency toward kissing and making up with Amazon, now that MacMillan paper books are back in inventory.
However, even though Amazon and MacMillan have decided that MacMillan hardcover and paperback non-virtual books will go back on Amazon’s virtual shelves, there still does not appear to be total agreement on the e-book front, although that is where the trouble started. None of MacMillan’s e-book titles have yet reappeared in Amazon’s Kindle catalog, so it can be assumed that the two are still negotiating the details of their e-book arrangements, according to a Reuters story.
MacMillan books have been missing from the Kindle area of the Amazon Web site for almost exactly a week. An attempt to order any of the usual MacMillan books in a Kindle edition are met with a message saying, “Tell the publisher! I’d like to read this book on the Kindle.” Macmillan is apparently still among a number of publishers who are in a dispute with Amazon over e-book pricing. Among those involved in the fight over prices are Hachette, Harper-Collins, and others, all of whom want to see higher e-book prices and corresponding higher profits.
On one side are the publishers, typified by MacMillan, whose CEO John Sargent has said, “Amazon and Macmillan both want a healthy and vibrant future for books. We clearly do not agree on how to get there. Meanwhile, the action they chose to take last night clearly defines the importance they attribute to their view. We hold our view equally strongly. … By the time I arrived back in New York (after a meeting with Amazon) they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.”
On the other is Amazon, who said on their blog, “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 ebooks.”
Consumers are the ones most involved in the issue, it would seem, with the least to say about it. The big companies are fighting it out while the reader can only watch. Readers simply want the greatest variety of ebooks for the lowest possible prices. They see the ebook as being different than printed books, and especially less flexible, such as being able to resell them or loan them to friends. This lower flexibility, plus the fact that publishers don’t need to pay the printing costs for ebooks, equates to lower prices in the minds of readers, and it is hard to argue with them. This looks like a case of outright greed on the part of publishers, with Amazon in the unlikely role as consumer hero.
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