Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight – Charlie’s Diary
Posted: January 31st, 2010 | Author: lrei | Filed under: Misc | Tags: apple, Business, drm, freedom, ipad | Comments OffAmazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight – Charlie’s Diary: “Final note: to customers, Amazon would like to be a monopoly (i.e. the only store in town). To suppliers, Amazon would like to be a monopsony (i.e. the only customer in town). Their goal is to profit via arbitrage, and if they can achieve those twin goals they will own everyubody’s nuts — the authors, the customers, everyone.”
The post goes into detail on how the current model works how amazon and the publishers are trying to evolve it in different, mutually-exclusive ways.
After years of being screwed by the content industry at large (Music and Movie) I was generally inclined to be against the publishing industry in what I though was mostly their attempt to exact higher prices from consumers. And of course, DRM; it might not be important to the publishers but it is very important to consumers. Eventually, if one side offers DRM-free media and the other DRM-encumbered media, the winner is clear. Consumers are not as stupid as they appear to board level executives who I’m guessing are the type of people who think themselves much more intelligent than the rest.
Overall, the reverse auction model tends to be a very good one for the consumers – at least those of non-technical books whose prices seem to never go down *coff* – though this probably is just the way it has to work with a much more limited but “premium” market.
Most of the books I tend to read have been around for a few years – many of them already in the public domain, so I guess picking up a book at $6 is better than amazon’s fixed $10. But paying $15 is not. I wonder which books will cost more…
I just hope that this battle results in DRM free books like it did for music. DRM is always too expensive.
UPDATE: Amazon has replied via a post on the kindle community forum.
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!
Thank you for being a customer.
Seems surprisingly reasonable. It is clearly a victory for Macmillan. The prices are probably, as Amazon says, unreasonably high but you can chose not to buy them until they drop the prices…
I just hope that this is only the first battle in a long line that will result in DRM free e-books down the line.
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