Most of the internet buzz seems to lean toward Amazon having egg on its face today, with MacMillan triumphant, but here is a link to an interesting contrarian view from James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research (probably the premier research firm in the high tech industry):
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-in-amazon-vs.-macmillan-amazon-i...
Its main points are that:
(1) Amazon wins in the short run because they will now be making instead of losing money on every book from MacMillan (and any other publishers dumb enough to follow that publisher's lead)
(2) Inter-publisher rivalry will drive down ebook prices to perhaps as low as $9.99 again. (Strangely, he doesn't mention simple market forces as a driver of the lower prices. Lower prices is what happens to artificially elevated prices in the absence of monopoly power and collusion.)
(3) Publishers will make less money in the long run and have less to offer authors, with the result that more authors will bolt their publishers for Amazon in the way Steven Covey, Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and now Paul Coelho have, giving Amazon the win in the next round too...