Amazon Drops Macmillan e-books on Price Conflict

Last week, Amazon had surprisingly removed Macmillan books from its e-books offering for Kindle. Many pointed out that since Macmillan tied up with Google for iPad, Amazon had remove it from its list. Apparently, the dispute over pricing caused Amazon to take Macmillan books off its site. Macmillan asked Amazon to hike the prices of its books from $9.99 to $15. So, Macmillan proposes, Amazon disposes.
Amazon had published a note about this issue on its website:
Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
Thank you for being a customer.
Not to be worried for Amazon has temporarily pulled off Macmillan e-books noting the "seriousness of the disagreement". Macmillan CEO John Sargent clarified that Amazon had pulled off Macmillan books due to 'new terms of sale' for e-books. In a note published at Publishers Marketplace, Sargeant stated, "Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores." Obviously, any business would like to secure its position in the future especially when competition may go fierce.
At Amazon, a hard-copy of fresh title can be purchased for $15 and now, Sargeant is looking forward to sell the digital copies of the same book at the same price, which is kind of surprising. For this, Sargeant justified, "(it) needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated."
Macmillan justifies by claiming that its proposal is in favor of authors, performers (in case of audio books), publishers and retailers to be profitable enough for bringing more content. Amazon believes in offering titles are lower rates in order to achieve more sales. Earlier, publishers weren't contented with Kindle-centric pricing and now, the premium entry of Apple iPad has hammered their feet.