John Sargent for Macmillan:

[I. J. Parker]

I have excerpted from the letter in Publisher's Lunch.

 

"And now on to royalties. Three or four weeks ago, we began discussions with the Author's Guild on their concerns about our new royalty terms. We indicated then that we would be flexible and that we were prepared to move to a higher rate for digital books. In ongoing discussions with our major agents at the beginning of this week, we began informing them of our new terms. The change to an agency model will bring about yet another round of discussion on royalties, and we look forward to solving this next step in the puzzle with you.

A word about Amazon. This has been a very difficult time. Many of you are wondering what has taken so long for Amazon and Macmillan to reach a conclusion. I want to assure you that Amazon has been working very, very hard and always in good faith to find a way forward with us. Though we do not always agree, I remain full of admiration and respect for them. Both of us look forward to being back in business as usual.

And a salute to the bricks and mortar retailers who sell your books in their stores and on their related websites. Their support for you, and us, has been remarkable over the last week. From large chains to small independents, they committed to working harder than ever to help your books find your readers.

Lastly, my deepest thanks to you, our authors and illustrators. Macmillan and Amazon as corporations had our differences that needed to be resolved. You are the ones whose books lost their buy buttons. And yet you have continued to be terrifically supportive of us and of what we are trying to accomplish. It is a great joy to be your publisher.

I cannot tell you when we will resume business as usual with Amazon, and needless to say I can promise nothing on the buy buttons. You can tell by the tone of this letter though that I feel the time is getting near to hand."

[Jon Loomis]

It's basically WalMart's business plan transferred to the internet, and unfortunately it's plain old hardball retail selling--undercut the competition until he goes under. There was a window of opportunity maybe ten years ago for others to move into online bookselling and find a way to do it better than Amazon, and no doubt other opportunities will arise for big players (like Apple, say) to take a bite or two out of Amazon's market share. But yeah--the brick-and-mortar guys, with the exception of big, established sellers in densely populated urban centers--are pretty well screwed. And ebooks are going to screw them even harder.