A smattering of opinions on technology, books, business, and culture. Now in its 4th technology iteration.
01 February 2010
OK so Amazon’s “move against Macmillan”:http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/all-the-many-ways-amazon-so-very-failed-the-weekend/ was seriously ham-handed and Amazon is “still caught up in their own undershorts”:http://whatever.scalzi.com/2010/02/01/seriously-now-theyre-just-being-dicks/. Some Amazonians deserve some serious reprimands, this is just not the way these things are handled. Now Amazon has created even more problems for itself.
That said – we are talking about 4-5 days of inconvenience Amazon has caused readers and authors. Stupid but fixable.
As “Charles points out”:http://www.platformonomics.com/PricelessIndeed.aspx, Macmillan is trying to put the screws to all of us big time and for the long run. They are grabbing for more dollars out of out pockets at a time when book costs are heading down. Now, if Macmillan was passing all this on to authors, I might be OK with it, but I suspect it is being absorbed by a bunch of corporate suits.
Who is our real friend here? Shame on Amazon for being so clumsy, but greater shame on Macmillan.