Actually, that's what Amazon wants you to believe about it. The reality was somewhat different.

The thing you have to understand is that for a major publisher, the actual production cost of a book is a very minor cost. Most of the cost of getting that book ready is editing, typesetting (even for an e-book), cover design (also even for an e-book) and marketing. And, e-books represent around 10% of trade fiction sales, give or take, so they bring in less money overall.

What Amazon was doing was trying to force publishers into a contract wherein they had to offer Amazon the lowest list price, and lock them into an agreement where nobody (including the publisher's own website) could sell the e-books at a lower price than Amazon. And, to make matters worse, Amazon was trying to monopolize this market while offering the e-books at loss, essentially forcing everybody with a representative price (one that would actually put the e-books into the black) out of the market.

The publishers rebelled, and Amazon backed down.

But, Amazon was never doing it to protect consumers from the greedy publishers. Amazon was doing it to knock its competition out of business while ensuring that publishers couldn't do a thing about it.

If this is the future of academic journal publishing, I'll take the past, please. I don't mind accessibility, and I don't mind creative commons, but I do mind it when the journal reaches a point of being a parasite. I'm talking about author fees.

As far as I know, most journals pay for their publications via subscriptions from university libraries. They don't do it using a vanity press model, where they take money from the authors for publication. Both of the online journals mentioned here - PLoS and Scientific Reports, are charging scientists over a thousand dollars for publication.

I'm sorry, but speaking as an author, a researcher (who has co-written a peer reviewed journal article waiting for publication in a Classics journal), and a publisher, this is just wrong. It's taking advantage of academics who are desperate to publish in a "publish or perish" environment, and relieving them of their money. And, because the journal article authors are paying for publication, it will likely carry a taint that may undermine the legitimacy of any peer review the article passed.

Frankly, if this sort of parasitic business model is the projected future of academic publishing, I think it's best if it's skipped. The old model was better.

Actually, that was more the e-book publisher's response to Amazon. Amazon spun the dispute as the publishers wanting to be able to raise prices and gouge customers, but that wasn't it at all. Amazon was trying to create the same poison pill for other e-book retailers as they are right now with their app store. Now, e-books may be more expensive as a result, but Amazon is not in a position to shut down their competitors, and that is a net win for everybody.

The contract you sign with Amazon. If you did what you've just suggested, they'd hammer you for breach of contract.

You're missing the point - the target of this policy is not the app developers. It's the other app stores. Amazon is forcing a situation where they can provide discounts of up to 80% off without taking a loss, while forcing other stores to deal with an artificially high MSRP, and throughout this Amazon will always be guaranteed to have the lowest price. In short, it is weaponizing the app developers to wipe out retail competition, and force other app stores out of the market.

I'm sorry, but I don't think that's it at all. Amazon isn't gambling that it will sell 3.5 times the volume to compete with Google's Android Marketplace - it's trying to force you to overprice your app to put Google's Android Marketplace out of business. As far as they're concerned, so long as the sales go through Amazon instead of somebody else, it's a win, and ensuring that you can offer it for far lower than anybody else can is one very effective way to make that happen.

Not really. What happens with the book market is this (we'll use a book selling for $10 as our example, since the math is easier):

1. The publisher sets the list price at $10.

2. The publisher sells the book to the wholesaler for 55% off the list price, so the publisher now gets $4.50 for each sale.

3. The wholesaler sells the book to Amazon for 40% off cover, so the wholesaler now gets $6.00 for each sale, of which it keeps $1.50.

4. Amazon then sells the book for over $6.00, adding a discount to be competitive.

What we have in this case is a very evil monopoly move. Amazon is guaranteeing to developers that they will provide a minimum of 20% of the list price for each sale, but requiring the app developer to guarantee that they will never give anybody else a lower list price. So, the app developers are forced to overprice their products and throw other app stores under the bus price-wise, while Amazon offers massive discounts.

It's exactly what they want, but there's more to it than that. There's also a clause that states that the MSRP that Amazon gets has to be the lowest one offered - nobody can be offered a lower one. So, they'd be forcing every app developer who sells through them to overprice their products and throw every other app store under the bus...

As another comment on here pointed out, just about everybody is missing the point of what Amazon is doing. This isn't something to benefit the customer - this is a monopoly move designed to wipe out any competition to Amazon in the app marketplace.

I'm going to discuss this in layman's terms. Now, for details on the contract, see this post, which shows you where things are on the contact and how they're working: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1951734&cid=34889086

This is an evil monopoly move by Amazon, and it isn't the first one. This is the third I've seen. The first was a move to wipe out print-on-demand printers used by the small press market - Amazon contacted several of the larger small press publishers and informed them that if they didn't switch to Amazon's in-house printer (a company called Booksurge known for shoddy printing jobs), Amazon would remove the buy button on their books. Amazon did pull that trigger, by the way, and it resulted in a class action lawsuit that put an end to that particular trick. The second was an attempt to wipe out any competition selling e-books - Amazon spun the dispute as greedy publishers wanting to price-gouge customers, but what it was actually about was that Amazon had tried to get publishers to sign contracts stating that Amazon would always get the lowest list price for e-books, regardless of any other arrangements past or future...including direct sales from the publisher's own website. The publishers fought that one and won, even though they took a PR hit for it.

This one is an effort to wipe out any competition in the app market by manipulating app developers. Here's how it works:

As the article said, the terms are set where the app developer will receive 70% of the actual sale or 20% of the list price (basically, the price the store is supposed to sell it for), whichever is greater. As was left out (and pointed out in the post I linked to), there's a clause in the contract stating that Amazon must always get the lowest list price.

So, if you're a developer, you need to calculate the list price of your product based on what you need to receive from each app sold. Let's say that's $4. But, with the terms of this agreement, you are only guaranteed that if it is 20% of your list price, so you have to set your list price at $20. Therefore, if Amazon turns around and sells it for $4.50, you are guaranteed to get your $4.

But, this also means that in order to ensure that you get that $4, you are now forced to overprice your product. So, everybody else who carries your product - including yourself, if you have your own little app store - has to do it at a list price of $20. In the meantime, Amazon can set the price to whatever it wants, and so long as it doesn't go below $4, it will make a profit on the sale. And, Amazon even makes it look like it is doing you a favour - after all, if your app sells for $10, you're going to get $7 from it. Amazon gets to have the lowest prices, and you - the developer - have made it so that every other app store gets thrown under the proverbial bus when it comes to your app, because they will never be able to compete while using the list price that you are forced to give them.

This is an incredibly dirty trick, and what needs to happen is that app developers need to fight back and refuse those contract terms en masse. If they can do that - like the publishers did with e-books - then Amazon will be forced to back down. If they don't, then Amazon will stand a reasonable chance of not only gaining a monopoly position, but actually wiping out any competition.

"Isn't that exactly what the publishing companies want? Ebooks are a threat to the publishers' bottom lines. They're easy to share, they don't get old or fall apart, and authors can self-publish for basically nothing. Anything they can do that make ebooks unpopular keeps them relevant a little longer."

You know, I really am sick and tired of this drivel. Seriously, THIS gets modded up? I challenge you to prove just ONE of your claims. Go on - take a look at market figures and prove just one of them.

Not only do I run a small publishing company, but I was also there in the first big e-book experiment. In fact, I wrote one of the key attempts to make e-books work. It was called Diablo: Demonsbane, and it was an extremely successful e-book. Pocket Books marketed the hell out of it - they WANTED it to work. In fact, from 2000 to 2002 there was a concerted effort to make the format successful. It failed - the market just wasn't there yet. A bestselling e-book meant selling over a hundred copies, if you were lucky.

Here's the reality about e-books: they are a niche market, and they're being treated as one for a reason. If they did have a widespread adaptation, publishers would be thrilled. Do you know why? Because there is no print cost, and you can even cut the wholesalers out of the picture, so there are more profits.

Do you honestly think that self-publication is anything new? Print on Demand technology made it possible for authors to get a business license and self-publish inexpensively years ago - and those books tend to have a bigger market share than e-books do. Those e-books, by the way, haven't broken a 10% market share yet, and on a busy month, their market share is less than 5%.

Publishers don't give heavy support to e-books because in most sectors of the publishing market (there are exceptions, such as the technology reference market, which as far as I know is now mainly electronic), they are, and remain, a niche market. 90% of the publishing industry remains printed books, not because of some publisher conspiracy to keep the e-book down, but because the majority of demand is for printed books.

So kindly stop mischaracterizing the entire publishing industry as some reactionary dinosaur in an conspiracy to keep new technological development from the public. It simply isn't true, and it's reaching the point of slander.

The problem isn't criticism - criticism tends to make you better, actually. The problem is abuse. I posted this on the blog for the article, and I think it bears repeating here:

Coming at this from the perspective of an author, you get some similar issues with fans. Before I go any further, I have to say that 97% of the fans I've met are friendly, lovely people who I wouldn't mind having a drink at a pub with - they're kind and appreciative of all the work you've done, and they just enjoy your work for what it is. Then there's the other 3%, who are downright scary - and VERY vocal.

Back about ten years ago, I was writing one of the first online computer games issues columns out there. It had a readership of about 20,000, which while not huge, was respectable. And, I had this one fan who emailed me abuse.

Now, the job of an issues columnist isn't to be right - it's to raise a certain question in an intelligent way. My favorite feedback was always the people who disagreed with me, as that meant that I had been successful in starting a discussion. This fellow, however, didn't just disagree with me. He sent in actual abuse, accused me of propaganda, and when I added him to my killfile, he created a new one and sent me more abuse starting with "you can't hide." As far as he was concerned, he had the right under free speech to hound me.

As best I can figure, when it comes to that 3%, what's going on in their heads is that they think that because they have consumed your stuff, they therefore have rights over you. And, about all you can do is add them to your killfile, or boot them off your forum, when you detect them. You can't make them mend their ways, but at least you can get them out of your hair.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you. I'm coming at this from the perspective of a writer rather than a programmer (my last programming experience was in high school over fifteen years ago), but typing is an important skill here.

Now, will being a typist make you a better programmer? Absolutely. But not when it comes to thinking the code out. The place where typing is important is after the code has been thought out - the implementation. A programmer who does not know how to type will think the code out, and then have to find each key in order to input it into the program - it adds an extra step, and it takes longer. A programmer who is also a typist doesn't need to find the keys. The code flows smoothly from his head into the program via his fingers.

When it comes down to it, a good programmer must be skilled at both planning and implementation. Both are required. If you ignore the skill at implementation (aka not learning to type), you handicap yourself. The programmer who can both plan and implement clean and efficient code with speed will ALWAYS be of greater value than the programmer who can plan the code, but is slow to key it in.

You're not the only one - I started computer gaming back around 1990, and today when I have spare time, the only games I play on a regular basis are Legend of the Red Dragon (a BBS door game now online) and Urban Dead (a simple browser zombie MMO) - and that's how I start my day. With five minutes playing those games. Otherwise, my time and money go towards books and movies. I stopped being an avid PC gamer about seven years ago. For me it was a couple of things:

1. PC games went through a period of wild creativity from 1991-2002 - I call it the "golden age." Once that ended, though, games were big business with budgets approaching motion pictures, and they had become very conservative and more dedicated to formula. I'd already stormed the beaches of Normandy with Medal of Honor: Allied Assault...I didn't really feel like repeating the exercise with prettier graphics and better sound.

2. Piracy played a big role in thinning out the "herd" of PC games. I know there are people who want to deny this and claim that it's just unsuccessful companies not being willing to change their business model, but piracy became a lot easier once high speed internet and larger hard drive space made it possible to download entire CD games. And the game companies did adapt as the piracy rates skyrocketed - most moved their efforts to the console, and those who didn't started a DRM arms race. So, console games today are wide and varied, and there is quite a lot to be excited about...and I just don't have the time and money for them, or the interest in going through the learning curve (I prefer a mouse and keyboard). The PC game is very thinned out, with very little to be excited about (unless you're a fan of MMOs) and has a nice big arms race with pirates that just doesn't sit well.

So, I certainly think the biggest problem is that the PC game is not what it used to be. Partly it's a victim of its own success, and partly it's a victim of the pirates. PC gaming isn't dead - there are sections of it, such as the MMO, that are alive and well and growing, but the wild creativity that made it so exciting ten years ago is gone, and unlikely to return. Whether we want to admit it or not, the PC game is now the niche of video gaming, rather than the mainstay.

No moral dilemma at all.

There is a big difference between fantasy and reality. Playing the game is fantasy. The reality is that tens of millions died in the war the Nazis started, under that symbol.

Taking on their identity in an online game isn't fantasy, it's a very real slap in the face to everybody who fought, suffered, and died under them.

Ah, okay. Up here (Canada), Space and Comedy Network don't insert ads at all, as far as I know, and I think the same goes with Global and CTV.