Hard cover books are going to be more expensive now. Sigh.

The whole Amazon vs Macmillan disbute is interesting. Sorry Macmillan but I like cheap books. I support Amazon's policy of $10 books. Amazon is even taking a LOSS on those $10 books, since it "buys" them from publishers for $15 or whatever the cost is. Publishers seriously need to reconsider why they feel they need to charge $15+ for an ebook, which has literally no cost of goods associated with it at all. EVen the bandwidth to host them is miniscule.

Yet, just pulling all of Macmillan's books like that, including Tor (sci fi). That's just not cool.

John Scalzi writes about the authors who are stuck in the middle of this fight. I totally get his anger at Amazon for cutting off income to writers like that. It does highlight, for me, just how dependent authors are on publishers, and I don't really see that as such a good thing, especially in the age of the intrawebs.

I'm a firm believer in digital distribution and I wish authors had a way to tap into that, to bypass publishers completely. Why can't authors distribute their work directly via ebooks, and let publishers handle their hardcopies? Perhaps convenience is one reason, that publishers are able to do the ebook conversion work and authors don't want to deal with that. I also suspect publishers include the ebook rights into contracts so they don't lose out on that income.

But digital distribution would let authors keep more money. There are indie authors out there who purely distribute digital on their own, I think that's pretty cool. And the Amazon rating system lets buyers look for the ones with high rated and good reviews.

Seriously, though. I'm not buying ebooks for $15 or more. Not when I can go to costco and buy the hard cover for that same or less. Ebooks should be cheaper than the hard copy and the market demands this.

This is what will happen: hard covers go up in price to make $15 ebooks seem cheaper.This would make me very sad, but it is definitely one option publishers will have. Ironically, Amazon comes out better from this, too. They'll make more money per Macmillan's demands.

Instead, I'd like to see popular authors going direct. Bypass the publisher and do their own ebook rights, publish the ebook on their own or via print on demand services. Then authors can charge whatever they want, and keep more of the money. They can publicize the book via blogs, etc... don't need a publisher for that, and they'll be able to sell their books worldwide. I believe Amazon lets authors keep 70% of the cut.