I’ve been following, to some degree, the fight that broke out over the weekend between Amazon and Macmillan.
There have been a series of posts at Dear Author. There’s a long thread at Making Light.
While there are all sorts of opinions, there does seem to be a rough split down a certain line, with readers and Amazon on one side, and writers/publishers/editors and Macmillan on the other side.
But I suspect people outside the US aren’t so enamored of Amazon. At least here in Canada, I’ve found the customer service of Amazon.ca inferior to Chapters online. Plus the Kindle books are marked-up rather than discounted. For example my book Feral is sold for $6.40 rather than $5.50 at MBaM. Both American dollars. At least, I’m assuming the Kindle prices are all American dollars, because while Amazon.ca is selling Kindles, I can’t find Kindle books on their site.
If I look at something like Larissa Ione’s new book Ecstasy Unveiled. Kindle is $7.59, Kobo is $6.29, while paperback is $8.99. An older Larissa Ione book at Kobo is $7.59, so the above Kobo price may not last.
These books are US$6.99 at ARe and Fictionwise, which isn’t too different than Canadian $7.59. (I chose Ione’s books mainly because I keep meaning to read them!)
There’s no $9.99 limit. Stephen King’s latest offering is on sale for $11.99—which may be the limit. I should add that print books have always been more expensive in Canada than the US. In large part because of the dollar, which is now fairly close to par.
Anyway! My point, and I do have one, is that Amazon is hardly offering us Canadians excellent prices for ebooks and doesn’t even offer ebooks on the Canadian site as far as I can tell.
