Amazon V. Apple, some simple initial thoughts…

For people who might not follow this story all ready, here is a brief recap for you:

1. Amazon’s Kindle ruled the ebook market despite limited competition from a few other companies like Sony and Barns & Noble.
-It seemed that Amazon liked selling most ebooks for about $9.99 even though publishers wanted to sell ebooks for more.

2. Apple announced the iPad, and the iBook store.
-The iBook store will be selling many ebooks for more than $9.99

3. According to Mashable, the largest publisher of books is a company called Macmillan tried to

Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store.

Amazon did not like that idea very much, so it decided to show that they can play hard ball as well by…

Amazon’s apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves… That’s why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don’t play by its rules, then you can’t be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world’s largest online retailer.

My Thoughts

The Price of ebooks should be about $9.99. I know that publishers, and many writers totally disagree with that. I just don’t care.

As for Amazon pulling all of the Macmillan books (in digital or dead tree format) off their store is a good business move. But what about the customers who want to buy Macmillan’s books, is Amazon screwing them by doing this?

If you look at things in the short term: Yes.

Customers will have to buy the books someplace else, and chances are that they will have to pay more than Amazon’s low prices when they do.

If you look at things in the long term: No.

Amazon will force publishers to keep their prices low, which means that customers will be able to by books at low prices for a longer period of time.