I have been trying to follow the story of the dustup among Amazon, Apple, and Macmillan on pricing on e-book readers, but have been distracted by other things. What interests me are the business models being pursued by the various parties here – and whose makes sense, whose doesn’t, and who is likely to survive and win out. Plus – someone tell me what the legal status is of “books” that I purchase today on Kindle – am I simply purchasing a revocable license of some kind to read it? What’s the legal condition. I love my Kindle, and anticipated that some kind of pricing battles would eventually break out – but I sorta hoped that competition would favor me as a consumer. At this point, is it? Someone explain to me what’s going on.
Here’s Charles Martin on the business model; there are good stories in the Times, WSJ and FT.
Update: Delighted to have Virginia Postrel, of whom I am a big fan, join the comments and point us to her article at the Atlantic business channel. Very interesting article on pricing.
Update 2: There are a number of exceptionally interesting comments here in the thread.