Amazon vs…Rupert Murdoch?
Originally published at Insert Witty Title Here. You can comment here or there.
You thought it was interesting when it was merely Amazon versus Macmillan? Well, hold on to your seats. According to this article, Rupert Murdoch is unhappy with the US$9.99 Kindle prices.
“We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $US9.99,” Murdoch said when asked about electronic books during a conference call with analysts on Tuesday.
“They pay us the wholesale price of $US14 or whatever we charge,” he said. “But I think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books.”
What does Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation own? Oh, you know. A teensy publisher called HarperCollins.
Can you see it now? Let’s say Amazon does the same whoops-no-HarperCollins-titles-on-Amazon thing that they did (and as of this blog post at 7:35 am Eastern on Wednesday Feb. 3, are still doing) with Macmillan titles and removes the buy buttons for all formats (including print) and drops HarperCollins books from customers’ wish lists. I call right now that the entire right-wing-leaning world would learn about this via Fox News. Yeah, they’d have to say that Fox News is owned (like most of the entire world) by News Corporation. But I’m guessing that wouldn’t bother people too much.
And then…here’s the brilliant part…you know that if Fox News would be discussing this, MSNBC, CNN and The Daily Show wouldn’t be far behind.
All right, now I’m just giddy!
So go ahead, Amazon. I dare you to pull the plug on HarperCollins titles. I double-dog dare you.