The publishing company Macmillan is pulling their e-books from Amazon. The reason is that Amazon sells their e-books, even best-sellers, for $9.99. Seems a fair price. The over head is considerably less; the consumer is not getting a physical copy that required paper, skill and binding to place in their home library.

$9.99 just isn’t good enough for Macmillan though. They want $12.99-$14.99 for their e-books. I personally would rather have my books accessible to millions, and purchased by millions for $9.99 than the alternative. That being, limited access to my books, higher prices, thus selling significantly less. Let’s think volume. Let’s think value.

I understand the cost behind publishing. I’m not trying to take away from the considerations that go into authoring, editing, and publishing. However, the value of an e-book is limited. A consumer has made the initial investment into their expensive electronic reader, now they need as much bang for their buck as possible. And let’s face it, e-books encourage reading in our electronic age. The low price encourages downloading titles that may not have been sought out in the bookstore or library. You are able to expose new readers to new authors, get new followings….the long-term marketing advantages are truly endless.

Also, e-book reading owners will not forget that they had their George Orwell e-books deleted from their Kindles. Essentially, consumers are buying something that can be revoked at anytime. All the more reason that $9.99 is more appropriate.

And, Macmillan, don’t think that increasing the price, with the risk of losing what you purchased, will encourage people to buy physical copies. It won’t. We are a digital age. Convenience and low price is what entices people to try on more books for size.

Looking at the big picture, this is just a selfish move on Macmillan’s part and will hurt their reputation way more than it is going to affect Amazon’s.