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The stuffs that are going on behind the scene before an ebook could be placed online for sale, the whole thing is so messy and complicated that I’m not even sure that I’ve understood.  So we got a product which is ebook, and it’s not the same as music, because these products carry different baggages of interests.  We have seen how complicated music business is with labels’ constant lawsuits and new business models to cope with new technology such as iTune, illegal downloads through piracy, and others.  You can say the book business is experiencing something like that!  In music, artists have to content with labels’ dictations, but the Internet gives rise to more freedom for both well known musicians and just getting started musicians; correct me if I’m wrong, in book business, authors have to content with theirs publishers, and publishers have to content with various distributors that could sell theirs books.  From publishers’ point of view, Amazon is like a giant distributor, a mega store with endless shelves to stock theirs books and ebooks, which allows publishers to sell printed books and digital books easy and fast and in profitable quantity.  The problem is that when a chain of institutions that need to be wired together just to get books and ebooks to sell can create more unexpected opposing interests although the end goal is the same which to make more money from a single title.

Just recently, Amazon is wanting to take charge in dictating the prices for ebooks that Amazon is helping to sell such as digital bestsellers should only cost around $9.99 and not $14.99.  On the opposing interest, Macmillan, a publisher of many great titles, wants to sell many of its ebooks at the prices that are higher than what Amazon would have listed.  Amazon took action by removing all Macmillan’s titles from Amazon’s online store.  Troubling authors were complaining that suddenly theirs books are no longer produce revenue from Amazon’s stream — one less stream to fish in means less money for the authors who are siding with Macmillan.  So the obvious reason for Amazon to remove Macmillan titles was that Amazon would love to sell ebooks for cheap but in greater quantity to make up for the loss from cheaper ebooks’ prices, and at the same time to undercut its competitors such as Sony, Apple, and whoever else that is selling books and ebooks online.  For Macmillan, I could see that this publisher wants to sell more titles but at higher prices so more money could be made, and the Macmillan’s authors could somewhat reap higher royalties.  Amazon is now candidly saying that it had made the wrong move on this whole Macmillan decision, because Amazon should not be telling the publishers what to charge.  Amazon is saying that it believes many other publishers besides Macmillan are loving the idea of $9.99 digital bestsellers, and so now it’s up to Macmillan to set whatever prices for their digital titles — set a price too high, customers would hesitate in buying a digital copy of a title, and set too low of a price may stir up new controversies.

I think Amazon had done wrong on Macmillan matter, but it’s great to see it has spun around and allows a publisher to decide its own ebooks’ prices.  Since Amazon isn’t the only guy in town who is selling ebooks, and so it shouldn’t be able to dictate ebooks’ prices.  For authors, they now have a choice of picking which publisher they like to be published with when they have to consider about getting their books/ebooks to be sold online through Amazon.  For a customer like me, I would love to see Amazon continues promoting $9.99 bestsellers, and hopefully more great ebooks could be bought at that price since ebooks are a lot cheaper to make — no printed papers and inks were wasted.  It’s a democracy really, let Amazon negotiates with publishers about the right prices for ebooks, and let the publishers make theirs final decisions about the ebooks’ prices, and don’t let Amazon pulling a publisher’s ebooks off the shelves to create a lost for authors and a lost for customers (don’t in a sense that it’s a distasteful thing to do, but only Amazon has the right to decide on who it wants to be in bed with).