I said I didn’t care about the pricing issues between Macmillian and Amazon. That isn’t entirely true. I think the idea of more flexible pricing is a rather important thing in the long run, but in the short-term, it doesn’t directly affect me. I also have faith that the market will stabilize into something workable; it might take a few starts, but given what I see in the other medias, I think I have a good idea of what it will become.

Sooner or later, we’ll have flexible pricing on eBooks How do I know? The movie industry. Walmart sells DVD’s for $5 cheaper during opening week, then drives up the price for about five or six months. Then, they slowly drop down as the tail drifts out. When you wait long enough, it shows up in the $2 shelves at the local pawn shop.

Why? Because it maximizes profit.

One of the web comics I used to read (GPF Comics) used to joke about the “married game release schedule”. I don’t buy things on the bleeding edge, or “0-day” if you will. Instead, I buy when the price of an item reached the point I’m willing to pay for it. I make exceptions, writers I know personally get rammed right up to the top of the list, simply because I find that personal connection worth more than waiting until the price drops a couple dollars. Likewise, I like buying books at conventions, though given my personality, it comes down to that personal connection more than them just showing up.

There is a reason I pretend to be an author groupie.

Amazon’s $10 books is a relatively short term plan. I feel they can maintain it for a year, maybe two at most, then things will start to fragment as the needs of the publishers overrides their own loss at profit. They are looking for that desperate critical mass before someone (iPad, Sony Reader, n810) takes over. If they drive away their producers (Macmillian), then they risk losing that critical mass.

Market forces are a powerful thing. Macmillian and Amazon are in the market for one thing. To make money. Both will make decisions that attempt to maximize their profits and, surprisingly enough, there is a compromise in there. And then the third branch of that, the buyers, will put other forces on those items until they stabilize until some new technology shows up.

I also know that I’ll keep on buying books, but now I’ll consider eBooks slightly higher than physical books. Yeah, most people won’t offer it, but it also won’t stop me from “suggesting” that Pakensarrion or Wizard of Earthsea be turned into an eBooks (I’d pay full price for those, period) or those people at conventions selling their self-published works to also sell an electronic copy (I noticed some of the RPG writers did that last year at GenCon). That contributes to the market forces of eBooks and will help hasten the stabilization of the prices, technologies, and how the future of publishing will look like.

So, while I don’t care specifically about the Macmillian and Amazon thing, I think it is the one of the trumpets for the war. I already put my bet in how it will end, but like a good mystery novel, I want to see how we get there.