You might like to take a look at Peter Osnos column in The Atlantic; it’s headed

With Thanks to John Sargent

which is an accurate preview of the piece:

‘What Sargent did on behalf of Macmillan–there is no evidence that he was acting in consultation or collaboration with other publishers–is challenge Amazon’s policy of offering e-book bestsellers at $9.99. Based on the publishers’ list price, these were loss leaders designed to boost the sales of the company’s proprietary reading device, the Kindle, which retails for $259. The publishers’ concern was that Amazon was preparing to declare that it would no longer accept a loss on each sale and would insist that books be made available to it at lower cost. The result would be a precipitous drop in revenues for everyone–except Amazon.’

It goes a little way to balance the Amazon fanmail in much of the media…

http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/peter_osnos/2010/02/with_thanks_to_john_sargent.php

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