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Did Amazon Just Blink on eBook Pricing? "Ultimately … we will have to capitulate," says company

By Stephen Windwalker

As customers and members of Kindle Nation, we can’t pick Amazon’s battles. Amazon’s Kindle Team has posted this message on the Kindle community forums within the past hour, strongly suggesting that the company does not expect to have a strategy for fighting back if publishers insist on pricing ebooks at $12.99 to $14.99. We’ll see, and I hope you will share your opinion with Amazon directly on the forums and also in comment form below:

Dear Customers:

Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

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