It's regrettable that some of the authors are losing sales, but I think that Amazon is basically in the right, for the following reasons:<p>1. Their arguments with regards to price elasticity are supported by (admittedly, Amazon's) data, and are intuitively plausible. Cheaper books sell more, yielding more revenue. The cost of production is substantially lower for ebooks, so passing on some of the savings to consumers seems fair, and further, so long as a literate public is seen as a good thing, there's intangible benefits to consider as well.<p>2. It's a dispute between two businesses, and Amazon has a legal right to not list/stock books. Honestly, it's like a caricature out of <i>Atlas Shrugged</i>-- you have to sell our books at these prices (of which authors get < 10%) or you're somehow the villain... as opposed to a business that just does not want to sell on those terms. Further, their contribution to the livelihoods of the authors is probably greater than the "value-add" of a publishing house. If sales and distribution from a website is such an easy thing to do, then how is it possible that a single company feels reasonably secure with delisting so many supposedly desirable books? The amount of effort necessary to make 2-day delivery so much cheaper than going to Borders is immense. They also built the Kindle (as well as its ecosystem) and sold the device at a loss, which has helped make the ebook market so big.<p>3. The "authors" are the only really sympathetic characters in this drama, but they appear to have no agency of their own. Why not move to a different publisher, or publish on Amazon? Because Hachette won't let them out of their contract? I can see why they would want to group together to avoid getting trampled between the two companies, but why side with Hachette? Unless their objective is "fewer books sold, higher prices, and smaller royalty payments", their collective bargaining power would seem to be better put towards forcing Hachette to either agree to terms or release them to find other representation. Agitating on Hachette's behalf is probably the easiest way to get money flowing again, but it's hardly the right thing to do.<p>Given that Amazon's suggested model could be more profitable for all parties, why are the publishers resisting? I suspect that it comes down to the fact that if ebooks become the main method of book distribution, the value of being a publisher would decrease substantially. Amazon (or similar businesses) could handle the printing and distribution, marketing, editing, type-setting, and similar tasks could be passed to firms whose sole purpose is that task.<p>Regardless of how this shakes out between Hachette and Amazon, I can't really see a future for monolithic publishers.