Earlier this year I blogged about Why I Buy From Amazon.com despite all the nastiness floating around about them and their business practices. What it comes down to for me is convenience. I’m willing to buy from Amazon because they offer me what I need at a reasonable price with no shipping charges. So even though they screw with reviewers and have system glitches and are a big bad evil corporation, I still buy from them. Because the bottom line for me is, well, me. To quote my post from earlier this year:
I don’t care that Amazon is “taking over the world”. What I care about is getting the books I love at a reasonable price in the least amount of time possible.
For those of you not in the know about the latest SNAFU, here’s a quick breakdown of what happened:
Amazon and Macmillan are having a disagreement about ebooks and pricing. Amazon wants to continue to offer new hardcover bestsellers at $9.99 but Macmillan doesn’t want Amazon to discount their books. Amazon refuses to budge, so Macmillan refuses to allow them Kindle rights. In a power play, Amazon then refuses to sell any Macmillan books. At all. If you looked over the last day or two, no Macmillan books – including Tor and St. Martin’s Press – have a buy link at Amazon, unless it was through a third-party seller.
This is where Amazon screwed up. By taking away my ability to buy, they’ve now alienated me, the consumer. I can no longer buy the books I want in a convenient, reasonably priced manner.
But isn’t Macmillan just as guilty? By trying to force me to pay so much for an ebook, aren’t they also alienating me? I’ve been lamenting their pricing on ebooks for some time now, as I just don’t understand it. Why would I want to pay $14.00 for an ebook when the print book is $7.99? And what exactly do they hope to accomplish by pricing ebooks the way they do? Are they really that opposed to ebooks? Isn’t that rather shortsighted of them?
Personally I don’t believe Amazon should have the right to dictate the pricing of books. The $9.99 bestsellers has been a point of contention with many and I’m not sure which side of the line I fall on. I will say it makes me nervous to see one company with that much power. But it makes me just as nervous that Macmillan refuses to see that readers want ebooks, and at a reduced price. I can’t hold an ebook, lend it to a friend, transfer it or – in the case of Kindle books – own the rights to it, so why would I want to pay twice the mass market paperback price for one?
So who really screwed up? It seems to me a good share of the blame needs to land on both parties.
Like this:
Like Loading...
