Just take a look at the war between Macmillan and Amazon and you’ll realize that Macmillan is behaving just like the newspaper industry and not wanting to recognize that paper books and paper book publishers are on their way out. Amazon.com is right to not want to gouge customers with a price of $14.99 for an e-book that is costing the paper book publisher a mere fraction of the amount it did for printing and distributing the classical hard or soft cover book.
Amazon pulled new copies of Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall,” Andrew Young’s “The Politician” and other books published by Macmillan from its e-store on Saturday in reaction to the publisher’s new pricing model for e-books. This is a justifiable reaction by Amazon,com especially since in order to really enjoy an e-book, the reader needs to invest in “Kindle” or some other e-book reader.
Macmillan is one of the world’s largest English-language publishers with divisions including St. Martin’s Press, Henry Holt & Co. and Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Macmillan, just like it’s counterparts in the newspaper industry cannot see the handwriting on the wall.
If you are thinking of going into the bookstore business, I would strongly advise against it. Now is not the time to be investing in an industry that is on its way out. Look what happened to the corner photography businesses and the TV repair businesses that used to dot our landscape.