There is a lot of work out there offered for free, for a low price, and for what I feel is a fair price, if higher than I would like to pay ($5.99-$6.99). Anything more and I won’t buy it, I won’t go to the Darknet either, I will just not read your work.

An example of this, I used to buy a huge number of paperback books every year, then the prices went higher than I like, I started buying used copies, going to the library more, borrowing. I will still buy paperbacks if I get an author I love, but I will not try new authors that way. (Magazines are the same, they hit a certain price, and I don’t buy them much anymore).

Now, I have been looking for a good e-ink for reading PDFs (datasheet, reference manuals, etc) for my hobbies and work. I just found one that meets my needs wonderfully and have it on order now. I have downloaded some novels that the author puts out the first for free, with the rest of the series what I consider to be a good price. I will be reading those first, and buying from authors I like. I will probably also sample and buy from Bean more. I have sampled on my computer in the past from them, and ended up buying the paperback because I liked the first chapters, and didn’t want to read it on an LCD. Now I have an e-ink coming, I probably will not buy paper except in the rare occasion.

So, think, you are allowing your publishers to drive readership away. I read alot, I work with people who read a lot less then I do, and a number pretty much stopped reading fiction when the prices hit the point I stopped buying new. A number of them have been looking at getting e-readers, but this reaction from Macmillan really turned a number of them away.

Anyway, I will support the authors/publishers that treat me well (fair prices, no DRM, etc) and not the ones that treat me like I am a criminal or like I am stupid. Yes, authors and publishers are treated as a unit, it is the authors intellectual accomplishments that the publishers package and sell, and none of that can be done without the authors express consent.

I like dealing with Amazon too. Their customer service is reliable as hell and their Associates program is the most user friendly for webmasters. They do a lot right.

But remember, authors had not taken a side in the current dispute until Amazon made them do so by denying the public access to their books. Spin it how you will, that’s what Amazon did. And so of course, writers, whatever their position on ebook pricing, are going to think of their own incomes, families, bills and mortgages first. Naturally they’ll take a side against anything that negatively impacts those things. So would you if someone threw up a needless roadblock between you and your ability to earn a living. Sure, writers were pissed, even if they thought Amazon’s model for pricing ebooks was the right one all along.

As for who cares about the author more, look. The internet is chock full of people who go off on emotional tirades without thinking about what they’re saying, and so the bizarre conspiracy theories that flew in the last week have been insane to say the least. Truthfully, I think both players here — Amazon and the publishers — want to sell books. Apparently they have differing ideas as to how to best do it, and the answers will come from how the market responds to whatever is done. That’s how it’s always been. To comment on some of your examples, trade paperbacks began to overtake mass markets because they were actually selling better in certain genres. Among fiction bestsellers and age-old genres like romance, mass market rules, while in nonfiction and most literary fiction, those customers wanted trades. The market shifts you were seeing were nothing more than examples of the business finally responding to what people were buying. It was exactly the kind of adaptation you’re arguing (rightly) that publishers need to make where ebooks are concerned, and yet you’re strangely offering it as an example of the way publishing is apparently “unsustainable” and “dying before our eyes.”

Much of this discussion is now moot, basically, as Amazon has put the buy buttons back on all Macmillan/Tor product. Great. Now they can get on with negotiations as they should have done, without Amazon idiotically bringing writers and the public into it by denying them the books they wanted. They should have been negotiating intelligently all along. Now Amazon has to do so in a climate of severe loss of goodwill and a 7% drop in stock value because their investors interpreted their actions as real fear over the upcoming iPad. This could not have been a worse PR disaster for Amazon, and they simply didn’t need to do it.

In any event, I’ve run an Amazon Associates online store for about twelve years, and I noticed a drastic change in the way paperback/hardback/other editions of titles were released in just the last four years or so. When I started my bookstore, edition releases were like clockwork: hardcover, then paperback about a year later. That whole pattern completely shattered a few years back. Publishers were issuing multiple editions at the same time, putting out new hardcover editions of books that had previously been released only in mass market paperback, and the trade paperback edition became far more common in fiction than it ever had been before. It made updating the bookstore a real PITA, let me tell you! It also demonstrated the panic that was engulfing the industry.

I’m not condemning or defending Amazon or the Big Six, but I think authors–and this is a forum for authors–are hurting their own interests by taking sides either way. Authors need to remember that none of these big corporations on “on their side” although they all claim to be concerned about authors if it makes them sound good to say so. But for authors to be running around taking down their Amazon links and telling everyone never to buy anything from Amazon is just cutting off their noses to spite Amazon’s face. Readers and book buyers love Amazon and there are plenty of other authors for them to buy and read. Neither authors nor small publishers can afford to shun Amazon. And if that wasn’t true, why would so many authors be so upset that Amazon isn’t selling their books? “I’m temporarily losing sales because of Amazon–so I’ll tell all my readers never to buy my books from Amazon again.” Do you detect a logical gap there? “You can’t fire me, I quit!” Somehow I just don’t see how that attitude benefits an author!

In other words, treating them as paperbacks have always been done. The publishers’ position here — and I’m not saying it’s the right one, as I think they could come up with a compromise — is that if Amazon wants PB pricing on Kindle editions, then they should settle for a PB release window. Now, I actually think that’s short-sighted BS. The publishers should learn to treat ebooks as a whole different entity. But — and here’s the kicker — so should Amazon. And there was no call for them to delist print titles in a dispute over ebook pricing.

And besides, Amazon hasn’t “delisted” anything. They’ve simply stopped selling some books directly.

Hmm, I call that delisting. We’re not going into get into the definition of what “is” is, are we?

The books’ detail pages, with full information intact, are still on Amazon with active links to multiple resellers.

Ah, but you see, Inanna, now we’re into the spectrum of general principles. And the fact is, those buy buttons matter, and if you think Amazon doesn’t know full well that most of the people who visit their site won’t take the extra effort to look up one of those resellers (to buy from whom, I might add, such things as Amazon gift certificates cannot be used), then I have a nice beach house in Nebraska to sell you.

The truth is, you cannot buy Kindle editions of Tor books right now at any price, and that was unilaterally, 100% Amazon’s decision, not Macmillan’s, not the authors’. So if Amazon’s attitude is that they’re going to punish authors on general principles over a dispute that authors aren’t even a party to, then Amazon shouldn’t be surprised if authors and their supporters exercise some principles as well and remove links in response.

To sum up, Macmillan may be d-bags over pricing, but Amazon were double-deluxe d-bags for delisting. Both parties need to stop being d-bags, come to terms, and stop screwing both authors and readers.

You’ve gotten misinformation, Inanna. It was Amazon, not Macmillan, who unilaterally and impulsively delisted Macmillan titles. Books from the Big Six are completely available, right now, from every retailer on Earth not named Amazon, just as they’ve always been.

If you really intend to keep your word and make the pricing dynamic, this is really, really excellent news.
You really should publish the e-book priced at $14.99 the day the hardcover has come out. No I am not being sarcastic or sardonic here. There in nothing wrong with $14.99 for an e-book for somebody that can not wait to read the newest Hary Poter, or the newest Discworld novel.
BUT!
The price should come down at the moment those $24.99 hardbacks start to appear in bargain bins.
The price should come down AGAIN the moment a MMPB is released. The price must be a bit less than the price of discounted MMPB. The price should reflect the fact the fact that I can not resell the e-book, I can not even lend it to my wife. An average hardcover is read by at least 6 people, but there are very few e-books (I am talking about e-books purchased from official legal store, such as Fictionwise or Amazon, or Sony or Apple) that are read by more than one person.
Then the price must go down yet again when Trade Paperback hits the shelves.
When the number of purchases slows down again, the price should go down to reflect the situation.

The only problem is, I do not believe you will make true dynamic pricing. You are talking about those few e-books that are on NYT bestseller list that Amazon sells for $9.99.
There are, however, large numbers of e-books that sell for $20 or more, where paperback was released years ago.

Just have a look at
http://delkytlar.livejournal.com/81497.html?thread=361561&style=mine#t361561

I just did a price search on Fictionwise and found that only 285 of their 2032 titles there are priced at $9.99 or less. 857 are priced at $19.99 and up.

I find it hard to credit that over 40% of their books are still in hardcover.

Cory Doctorow is right when he says obscurity is an author’s worst enemy. Amazon has it right when they aim to make everything available as fast as possible, as easily as possible, to as many people as possible. What can the Big Six publishers possibly gain by withholding their products from their customers? Do they really think, with all the alternative platforms for entertainment and information available now, that they have leverage, and can force higher prices? I sure don’t have that luxury. I want every potential customer to be able to get any one of our titles in any format they want, right out of the gate. If they can’t, I’ll lose that customer to someone else.

The big mistake that the Big Six publishers are making is to equate ebooks with hardcover books. This is absolutely wrong (and Amazon gets it). Ebooks are the replacement for the mass market paperback. That is how their pricing should be calculated. Ebook buyers and readers are the people who used to buy mass market paperbacks–unconcerned about the book’s aesthetics, not looking for something durable or collectible, just after economical, accessible content. Most customers are not going to pay hardcover prices for ebooks, especially if they know the price will drop over time. The Big Six publishers need to start thinking like readers and book buyers, because until they do, they simply don’t have a clue.

You’re certainly entitled not to buy anything you think is priced too high. Folks do that every day when they shop for anything. I certainly do. I do all my brick-and-mortar shopping at Borders because they give out weekly 30% Off coupons and B&N doesn’t.

But why this attitude of “Boycott them and let them fail!” Well, great, so much for all those books you claim to love to read, then. Perhaps a better policy is “only buy ebooks in the price range you think is fair.” When the Big 6 see their $15 ebooks aren’t moving worth a damn until they drop to $10, they’ll figure it out.

It’s just the way this whole thing has turned into a parade of “fuck you too” vindictiveness that I find absurd. And Amazon, by delisting print editions that have nothing to do with an ebook pricing dispute, are the worst offenders by far, regardless of whether their pricing plan is better or worse.

And to read a bunch of comments from folks who, frankly, are not published authors and have zero experience in publishing lecturing experienced authors on how publishers themselves are somehow totally obsolete, and they’re just greedy swine who don’t want you to be successful anyway, and writers should just hire their own editors and PR people and self-publish (presumably out of their bottomless trust funds or something) because they’d make so much more money, is, to be perfectly honest, the most preposterous load of STFU ignorance this side whatever conspiracy theory Glenn Beck’s spewing this week. People who think along those lines owe it to themselves to read this educational post by Jay Lake.

If that’s all you think of an e-ink reader I can understand your comment. However, I *DON’T* ever intend to use my Kindle as a PDA. It is my replacement library. And from that point, it makes sense because I can stuff all my current ebooks on it without having to make storage space for them in my home. Plus, I can take them pretty much everywhere without breaking my back.

I don’t have a problem with paying $4.99, $5.99 or even $9.99 for an ebook version of a novel. Heck, I used to spend that much for a mass-market paperback.

What I won’t do is feed $14.99 to the big publishers like Hatchette or MacM just so they can bleed off some of the legacy costs they incurred in their print divisions.

Boycott them and let them fail!