The fight for supremacy on the eBook frontier has gotten ugly. Last week, book-selling giant Amazon battled with Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the U.S., over eBook prices. The New York Times reports that Macmillan CEO John Sargent flew to Seattle on Thursday to meet with Amazon execs and push to move to a pricing model where the publisher would set consumer prices for eBooks, with new releases ranging from $12.99 to $14.99, and Amazon taking a 30% sales commission. These terms are similar to the agreement Macmillan now has with Apple, to sell its titles on the new iBooks app for the iPad. However, Amazon remained adamant about maintaining its current $9.99 price point for new releases, and after a tense stand-off, stopped selling books from Macmillan and its family of imprints on Friday (though the publisher’s titles could still be purchased from third party vendors on the site.)
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