Amazon vs. Macmillan: my verdict

The part behind the cut is going to be long and somewhat arcane, but if you want to know some of how the sausage gets made -- just what's going on with ebooks and Kindles, how pricing gets determined, and why Amazon's strategy is problematic for the industry (let alone the petulance of their tactics) -- then read onward. Outside the cut, I'll point you at the response from Macmillan's CEO, and the more belated response from Amazon's Kindle Team (dissected by anghara). If you read only one other thing on the topic, it should be John Scalzi's magesterial (and highly amusing) analysis of how Amazon failed, because his post is about the tactics, and why they were such a resoundingly bad idea. The rest of this will be about the strategy, the behind-the-scenes stuff that explains why so much of the publishing industry is up in arms against Amazon.

( Macmillan may not be the good guy, but they're the better guy in this particular war. )

Back outside the cut to say that I am, in fact, going to remove the Amazon links from my site, replacing them with links to companies (such as Powell's or IndieBound) who haven't been skirting or possibly dancing over the antitrust line. Even if I agreed with Amazon's general position in the dispute with Macmillan -- which I clearly don't -- their reaction to it has not been the reaction of a company run by mature adults, as John Scalzi has abundantly detailed (see the link above). Yanking a sixth of your inventory, without warning, without explanation to your customers, is bad business. I don't want to do business with a company that behaves like that.