Controversy #2: I’m with Amazon

uh.

Somewhat deliberately, I’ve avoided reading news reports about the drama between Amazon and MacMillan until now.  I don’t own a kindle (or any other e-reader) so I’m not personally invested in this in any way, so I figured it might be best to ignore it.

This morning I finally read a few articles on the subject and was surprised by what I found.  If you’d like a good summary of the whole debacle, I’d suggest reading David Parkman’s “Weighing in on Amazon/Macmillan Pricing Debate,” (it’s the most factually relevant article I found on this subject, though you might find it slightly skewed toward the pro-Amazon side).

From what I’ve read, it seems to me that Amazon is getting bullied around by both MacMillan (along with similar publishers) and Apple.  Amazon seems to have the same take on e-books that I do: they should be cheaper than print books.  Why?  Because they are cheaper to produce.  Period.  I remember, actually, a very enlightening discussion I had with Dominique Raccah, CEO of Sourcebooks, on this very subject.  When asked what the actual cost is to produce an e-book, she skirted the issue almost entirely.  Publishers don’t want to admit the truth in this matter.  It just doesn’t cost that much to make an e-book.  And they’ve been doing all kinds of annoying things to fight this, like not releasing e-books until after the hardcover has been out for a few months.  But honestly, book publishers need to face the facts.  E-books are just not as expensive to make and produce and should, therefore, be cheaper.

They need to accept that their profit margins are going to go down.  They just are.  And as a consumer, I think this is a good thing.  Books are, and have always been, freaking expensive.

Anyway, to get back to the debate at hand, I think Amazon realized both this and that if they sold e-books at low prices they could sell Kindles.  Now, most of the articles against Amazon make them out to be this Goliath of a corporation, greedily controlling the e-book market (dominating, I believe, is the preferred term) that needs to be stopped before…before…what?

First of all, I think it’s time to back off of Amazon a bit.  Amazon single-handedly created a viable e-book market.  They supported e-books so much that they created their own, pretty decent, e-book reader.  They also weren’t paying publishers less for the e-books that they sold.  They bought e-books from publishers for around $12-$15 a title and sold them for $9.99 a title at their own loss, so publishers haven’t been getting the shaft the way they claim they’ve been.  Finally, MacMillan (and Apple, the real man behind the curtain in all this) are the real bullies and Goliaths here.  They’re forcing Amazon to sell e-books at a higher price so they can control the price of e-books (which I thought was illegal, but I’m no lawyer) to make more money in the long run.  During all of this, Amazon pulled MacMillan titles from its “shelves,” which a lot of writers on the internet are angry about (at least from what I’ve read).  I’m not sure I understand why they’ve been vilified for this.  They’re a retailer.  They have the right to sell or not sell whatever they want.  Welcome to capitalism.

But the real problem here is that publishers are running scared.  What is so bad about selling e-books at $9.99?  What’s going to happen?  Are people going to stop buying books?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s far more likely, after all of this, that people will just pirate e-books because buying them is way too expensive.  It’s time to face it, publishers.  The internet made selling words one whole hell of a lot harder.  It’s time to adapt.

And I guess that’s all I have to say on the matter, other than to say that the iPad looks like a  total bust anyway.  The kindle (while being to expensive for me to own one) is at least a great  digital reader.  Yeah, it doesn’t have color, but it does have E Ink and an electronic paper display that makes using it to read easy on the eyes.  The iPad doesn’t have that, to my knowledge, so as an e-reader it seems inferior .  And for all the iPad’s ’s other functionality…honestly I’d rather have a smart phone for when I’m on the road and a laptop for when I’m at home.  It just occupies a niche that doesn’t really need to be filled.

But that’s just my opinion, after all.