Trouble for Amazon

Some big upsets came along recently to shake up Amazon's rank as the
premier e-book seller.

FIrst, they are in a fight with Macmillan publishers. Amazon is
refusing to sell Macmillan books at retail - the buy it now button is
gone. This stems from a dispute the two are having over the price of
the e-books Amazon sells on their site. Instead of the standard
$9.99, Macmillan wants Amazon to charge closer to the rates of the
physical book, like $15. Amazon's response is to pull their books
from being sold on their site via retail. You can still get the books
via Amazon Marketplace, but since those are used, that doesn't help
Macmillan any.

And just as Amazon deals with this problem, comes a curveball from
Apple. It's new iPad was recently launched, touted as a replacement
for your e-book reader, among other things. This could be a bigger
threat than Barnes and Noble's Nook or Sony's e-reader. With other
functionality, the iPad comes at a reasonable price for what it is.
Macmillan, among others, has already agreed to publish their books
through Apple's iPad.

But that's not all. Google is planning on launching Google Edition,
it's own e-book store. Google plans to allow publishers to set their
own rates, allowing publishers to make a reasonable profit over their
e-ditions.

Most of this is a response to Apple's intention to let the publishers
set their own rates. The good news that comes out of this is that
e-books will be available the same day the print version is released,
something that has been available until now.

What do you think of the controversy? Should Amazon allow publishers
to set their own rates or continue to be a discount dealer?

Nicole