More Than Once Upon a Time

There’s been a lot of ranting back and forth lately about the Amazon/Macmillan fiasco of a couple of weeks back, and I thought I’d take a moment to make clear what I thought (and what I believe a lot of other authors thought) about the whole thing.

First of all, it wasn’t about the pricing. Personally, I don’t think either pricing model being proposed is the right one. I think ebooks should be priced like mass market paperbacks, mostly because I think mass market paperbacks are what ebooks are going to ultimately replace. So I don’t really care one way or the other about Amazon’s or Macmillan’s pricing models. (Not that Amazon or Macmillan care what I think about book pricing. I have even less input on that than I do on the cover art.)

What it was about for me was bullying. I don’t like bullies. I have no idea what was happening at the negotiating table – maybe Macmillan said something to Amazon that left Amazon no recourse but to pull the buy buttons from Macmillan’s books. But I doubt it. Mostly Amazon’s tactics struck me as those of the kid in the pickup basketball game who, not liking the fact that the gang doesn’t want to play by his rules, takes his ball and goes home. It’s his ball, so he can do what he wants. But that doesn’t mean I can’t think he’s a jerk for doing it.

And, because there was a personal element involved, ie my books being affected (I probably lost only two or three sales, but still), my reaction was a bit more virulent than it might otherwise have been. But, even if I hadn’t been involved, I think the substance of my reaction would have remained the same.

I don’t like bullies.