Amazon.com You are NOT Entitled to Strong-Arm Publishers

So, if you go and look for a MacMillan book (or any of its imprints), say for example the brand new City of Dragons or the new paperback A Trace of Smoke, amazon.com says "we'll let you know when it's available." And if you put either of these on your gift list, go look. They're gone.
I've tested this myself right after midnight on January 31st.

Apparently MacMillan had the temerity to demand that Amazon.com only take 30% of the retail price, and wanted to determine the price that its products, including ebooks, would sell for.

Amazon.com, you are NOT entitled to just pull all the books a publisher has to offer (you can buy them still through independent resellers on amazon.com) because you...what? Want to control the price of the products you sell? Want to be able to dictate terms?

Well, I'm boycotting Amazon.com, because while you and I are entitled to health care, we are also entitled to a market place where the folks who have taken the financial risks (that's the author and the publisher) are entitled to input about how much their products sell for. And we're not falling for that "we're protecting the consumer" nonsense you are peddling.

Monopolies are never in the best interest of the consumer.

As someone who has worked in the software industry for nearly 20 years, I'm deeply ashamed of the behavior of the folks at Amazon.com. I will never spend a dime there again.

I also hope that the publishers wake up and smell the coffee, and charge a fair price for ebooks, or they'll suffer the same fate as record labels did last decade. It doesn't cost as much to produce an ebook, and people know that, and want to see a price that reflects it. But not a price nor terms dictated to it by Amazon.com.

More info here:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/