BIG UPDATE (01/31):
48 hours later Amazon has reversed its decision and agreed to Macmillan’s pricing plans. Read the full post on that here.
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ORIGINAL POST:
If you woke up this morning and tried to order any of the countless Macmillan titles on Amazon you were out of luck. In the midst of a dispute over Kindle pricing, Amazon decided to pull a preemptive strike and remove all Macmillan books including physical ones.
The dispute is over who gets to set book prices and specifically prices for hardcover books. Amazon seems to think it should be in charge of prices and not book publishers while book publishers understandably disagree.
Still, this seems pretty crazy to me. Macmillan is one of the biggest US publishers (imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Tor/Forge, Henry Holt, and St. Martin’s Press) and pulling their physical books as well as Kindle books feels like a pretty weird and authoritarian move. Will it remind book consumers of Kindle’s recent problems remotely deleting e-books people had already purchased?
And what will book buyers do? Buy a different book? Go to a different online retailer? Maybe walk outside of the house and visit an actual book store? Hmm, might go do that myself…
Update 1
Some Macmillan authors weigh in with their thoughts: Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi, who had this to say
If nothing else, this bit of asshattery on the part of Amazon has well and truly cured me of any desire to ever get a Kindle. If Amazon is willing to play chicken with my economic well-being — and the economic well-being of many of my friends — to lock up its little corner of the ebook field, well, that’s its call to make. But, you know what, I remember people who are happy to trample my ass into the dirt as they’re rushing to grab at cash.
Update 2
The CEO of Macmillan, John Sargent, has posted a letter with his point of view:
This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon 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…
Allen Harkleroad says:
This news makes me so glad that I am self-published and don't rely on large book publishers for income.
John says:
Why is it understandable that publishers should be able to set prices? Is there any other article where a distributor or manufacturer decides what the price of their products is in stores? I think it's just ridiculous, publishers should sell their books to Amazon at whatever price they want to, and let Amazon decide how much profit they want to make on each book.
Skip McMahan says:
"Is there any other article where a distributor or manufacturer decides what the price of their products is in stores?"
Yes, in fact there are a number of manufacturers and distributors/wholesalers that strictly enforce a Minimum Advertised Price policy for their goods, this is done to protect profits of the retailers who sell said goods. Like it or not, it is an accepted business practice.
John says:
Setting a minimum price is illegal in the US. ( http://supreme.justia.com/us/220/373/case.html ) There is no way that something illegal is an accepted business practice.
A minimum advertised price is something else and is regulated under the "rule of reason" ( http://supreme.justia.com/us/551/06-480/index.html ), if it comes too close to setting a minimum price it is also illegal. I seriously doubt that MacMillan's practices can stand that test.
Mrspiffy says:
Not all Macmillan books are gone, I was able to pull up several books from Seven Seas, a Macmillan imprint.
Lincoln Michel says:
Hey Mrspiffy, Amazon reversed its decision today so maybe that's why you saw those books?
http://thefastertimes.com/fiction/2010/01/31/amazon-caves-to-macmillan-with-passive-aggresive-letter/