Normally, when giant corporations fight, it's more a source of indifferent amusement for me more than anything.  While I recognize there was some drama last month over whether companies should be able to act like people, most of the time when public kefuffles occur, it's provides me a giggle over whether Papa John's hurt Pizza Hut's market share by saying that their ingredients are better.  There are certainly underlying issues involved, but it ends up sounding like two fifth graders upset that one didn't invite the other to a birthday party.  Even though it involves the business I work in, I have to admit, this whole Amazon vs. Macmillan seemed to fall into that category, until I started reading authors talk about how they've been affected.

If you're the sort that casually peruses publication trades, you're already aware of the Macmillan vs. Amazon story to date, but in case you're wondering what's going on, here's a brief recap from my not entirely non-biased perspective:  Amazon, giant internet bookseller starts selling their e-reader, the Kindle, in late 2007, and subsequently, Amazon sells quite a few books via the Kindle medium as the device takes off.  Amazon holds the price of books on the Kindle to $9.99, while paying the publisher somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 for each book sold, believing they will make up the difference in Kindles sold and likely whatever else you end up buying at Amazon.  The $10 price point isn't terribly thrilling to publishers as they feel the lower prize cannibalizes sales from the physical book product.  Some publishers react by holding back the digital form for a few months following the primary physical release, while some publishers just grumbled.  Until recently, what were you going to do?  The Kindle via Amazon was essentially the only game in town.

Enter the iPad, which may not have been the wonder device some hoped, will still be a very big player in the eReader game.  Ask music retailers (if you can find one)...when Apple enters your market, they play for keeps.  Apple, instead of operating as a straight retailer of electronic books offered publishers a different deal...sell your book for essentially whatever price you'd like, and we'll keep a flat 30% fee.  Publishers, now having a choice of sorts, generally preferred the deal Apple was offering and signed up to provide content for the iPad.  Macmillan, as one of the big players in the publishing game with imprints such as St. Martin's Press, Henry Holt, Farrar, Straus & Giroux and speculative fiction powerhouse Tor, decided to inform Amazon they wanted the same deal on the Kindle they were about to get on the iPad.  If Amazon wouldn't relent on their price point, Macmillan would hold the Kindle version of their new releases for months to float sales of their other, more profitable versions.  Amazon, in response, just stopped selling Macmillan product.  Seriously.  Apparently, Macmillan and Amazon were getting everything worked out, possibly in couples counseling, but as I'm typing this, try to buy a copy of Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections on Amazon, and Amazon kindly offers to sell you a used copy.  So, basically Amazon would like to offer you a copy of The Corrections or whatever other Macmillan published book you'd like used, so that neither the publisher nor the author get paid.

That's the problem with this dispute:  it's one thing for faceless companies to do battle, but when authors who believed that having a publisher like Tor or St. Martin's would mean their book would be available everywhere end up with essentially dead links on the internet's most powerful bookseller, that's an entirely different issue.  The big authors will probably be ok with this little glitch, but for a number of writers, this could change their royalty statements significantly, affect their next deal, etc.  As someone with a book coming out next year, I would be horrified if I found out my book basically became inaccessible for a weekend, a week, or maybe longer.

The funny thing is, this is the sort of thing indie booksellers warned us all about, in that Amazon ends up with more power than is probably healthy.  I'm not stupid, I don't necessary believe that Amazon is all that concerned about the artists behind the work they sell, but when a company is willing to pull this sort of stunt, I'm not entirely sure I want to support them, and it definitely doesn't make me want to buy a Kindle at this particular moment.  It's too early and the wonder of the iPad is still aglow in us all to say whether Apple will be much friendlier to authors, but Amazon is seemingly willing to give up a certain amount of public relations in order to make a point, which has to please the execs in Cupertino.

Even when Apple and Macmillan work out their differences, this won't likely be the end of these sort of troubles.  Apple entering the market will certainly change the dynamic of what was essentially a monopoly.  Prices will fluctuate, and pundits will declare that the sky will be falling on several occasions.  The music business' experience with digital technology wasn't easy, but it worked out, possibly to the benefit of the consumer.  Time will tell, right, but if we can avoid any major hiccups like this week's drama, that would make the process far less traumatic.