It seems that Amazon, in its bid to sew up the industry, may be doing things that harm the author's ability to get paid a reasonable sum for writing (and an author's publisher, too). My being an author aside, this also means that in the medium- and long-term, these activities could impact the number and quality of books I get to read.
An excerpt from Charles Stross's recent blog on the topic:
Last Friday, Amazon.com unilaterally pulled most or all of Macmillan's books from their online store. (You can still find them via afilliates or second-hand stores, but Amazon themselves won't sell them to you. Note that this only affects me via my Merchant Princes books — published by Tor, a Macmillan subsidiary — in the US Amazon store. My Ace titles are safe ... for now.)
Read the entire blog here. Looks like I have another reason to hope Apple's bookstore gets off the ground!
-http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/01/amazon-macmillan-an-outsiders.html
