February 01, 2010

we have a monopoly on michael sippey

Two great things about John Scalzi’s wrap up of the Amazon / Macmillan cluster this weekend. First, this bit:

The letter took time to praise Amazon but also did some interesting rhetorical heavy lifting — for example, labeling Amazon a “customer” of Macmillan rather than a “partner,” which is a fun corporate way of jamming Amazon into an ecological niche it probably would prefer not to be in.

Second, Scalzi’s changed the descriptive slug on his blog to read “We have a monopoly on John Scalzi.” Nice.

But since his post is trending on Techmeme, I wish that Scalzi had a bit more to say about how the only real winner here is Apple. Not only because this weekend’s drama has the potential to drive passionate readers away from Amazon and to Apple, but also because the only way Macmillan’s tough guy bargaining position re. the “agency model” would have been possible is because of iBookstore.