Stephen Colbert lambastes Amazon over blocking, delaying Hachette books

I think it's pretty hard to take a stance in this case. On one hand, Amazon wants to keep prices low for customers, but don't want to pay the subsidy from their pocket anymore. On the other hand, Hachette doesn't want to pay part of that subsidy either, and they threaten the authors that if Amazon has its way they will have to get a smaller royalty (because they aren't willing to lower their costs).

Amazon has a lot of power, and they could easily start abusing it either soon or in the future, but for now I think they are fighting in the interest of the customer. Hatchette on the other hand, is acting much like the big music studios - threatening that the authors/artists will be the ones to lose, and not them.

The truth is the publishers and big studios are becoming increasingly more threatened with extinction, and in the future there won't be room for them to take the majority of revenue from a book. Either they adapt to take a much smaller cut, or they will go bankrupt.

That's why I think Amazon is on the right side of history here. I also think Amazon is on the right side of history, because I don't think most ebooks are worth $15, which is what most of these publishers want them to be at (going by the deal with Apple).

Either way, Amazon won't be subsidizing their ebooks by $3+ forever. They will eventually raise the prices, and I don't think that will be good for anyone. Not Amazon, not the authors, and not the publishers either, as there will be a lot fewer ebook sales. I think the $9.99 price point played a huge role in getting people to read e-books (remember when reading ebooks wasn't anywhere close to the acceptable way of reading a book?).

What's the ideal scenario here? It's for ebooks to remain $9.99 (or less) and for Amazon to end the subsidies (which would make things easier for their competitors), which of course means the publishers will have to take that $3 cut themselves (I don't think the authors should take any cut, as they already get pretty low royalties from the big publishers). If you agree that this is the ideal scenario, then you agree that Hatchette is in the wrong here.