In case you’re blissfully unaware, MacMillan placed an ad in Publishers Weekly explaining that they were changing the prices of their ebooks, which Amazon was none too happy with.

Amazon responded by informing MacMillan that they would no longer sell any MacMillan books–digital or otherwise. Basically, Jeff Bezos took his ball and went home. On Sunday afternoon, Amazon quietly announced in its Kindle forum that maybe it would sell MacMillan books after all. Apparently, Bezos realized the game would go on — with or without him.

I wasn’t going to blog about this is because — and this will come as a shock to you — I don’t care. I don’t care because I don’t buy ebooks from middlemen.

Every ebook I’ve bought has been bought from the publisher’s or author’s website because I don’t see why you need a middleman for an eBook. There’s no shipping or inventory advantage to a middleman like there is with physical objects. It amazes me that established publishers like MacMillan don’t learn from successful epubs who sell exclusively through their web sites. Heck, Simon & Schuster sold ebooks direct to consumers ten years ago.

I think Bezos is afraid that consumers and publishers will wake up and realise that his company and other booksellers can easily be bypassed. In fact, I would bet money that the motivation behind the Kindle is to lock consumers into a particular vendor to preserve the middleman.

Otherwise, Amazon could one day be obsolete and Bezos knows it.

#1: The best Kijiji ad ever. Kijiji is somewhat like Craigslist if you’re unfamiliar with it. Hey, if you’re going to ask for something for free, you might as well make it interesting (seriously, go read it).

#2: You may have heard that news that John Hughes died last week. He was the director of a number of movies, like The Breakfast Club, that defined the ’80s for many people in North America. In the wake of his death, there was a very interesting/touching post on a blog by a woman who was pen pals with John Hughes when she was a teenager.

#3: You know you’re unpopular when hackers trying to knock you off the web take out LiveJournal, Facebook, and Twitter to do it. Something tells me this guy is going to be unpopular with users of those sites for a while. In other news: Georgia and Russia are still not playing nice with each other.

#4: A humorous look at the ups and downs of writing (er, dating) a book from initial idea (first date) to publication (break up) by Libba Bray. Dang, I wish I was this clever.

#5: If you’ve been using Tr.im as your URL shortener, you’re out of luck. The service is shutting down. No word on what happens to all those shortened links people have made.

#6: It was bound to happen: Recent Amazon patent filings suggest ads are coming to Kindle ebooks.

#7: Do you know what it takes to be blocked by William Shatner on Twitter? Hilarious blog post by blockee.

#1: If you enjoyed the link a few weeks back on making unusual bookshelves, you’ll like this LifeHacker round up of bookworm hacks that have been featured on this site (including the bookshelf one I linked to a few weeks ago).

#2 For those of you who are in the UK and dying for a Kindle, you may just get your wish this fall (er, I mean ‘autumn’). No word on when it comes to Canada–but I’m quite happy with my iPod Touch for book reading.

#3: If the idea of destroying any book for any reason gives you hives, you may want to skip this link: Artist Su Blackwell makes art out of old books.

#4: Barnes & Noble recently offered their readers the B&N eReader software for free plus six ebooks. Problem? The six ebooks are in the public domain but B&N has put DRM on them. Say what?

#5: From my inbox (hey, stranger things have happened): If you’re in the US and you’re looking for a used book sale (or having one), there’s a website for that. Let me know if you find it useful.

#1: I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea, but a publisher convinced Amazon to delete Orwell ebooks that had already been bought on customer Kindles. That’s sure to encourage consumers to buy ebooks…or maybe not.

#2: It’s all very good to have a blurb by a famous author on a less famous author’s book, but designing the cover to fool the consumer into thinking the book was actually written by said famous author? Not cool. Not cool at all.

#3: Remember that speech Sarah Palin gave when she resigned her post as governor of Alaska? Someone has edited, copy edited, and fact checked that train wreck into understandable English. I was tempted to do this myself, but Vanity Fair beat me to it.

#4: I’ve long suspected that Facebook is a privacy nightmare, but I didn’t know that it actually violates the law (at least where I live). Maybe I’ll finally be able to delete my account from my 5 minute foray into Facebookdom (creepy).

#5: Another post on judging a book by its cover. This one from Justine Larbalestier on the US cover of her book Liar where the cover shows a white girl but the lead character is actually black. Confusing to the readers to say the least especially since the book is about a girl that lies and the cover suggests she is lying about at least one thing she isn’t lying about.

#1: An update on J.D. Salinger’s bid to block publication of a book based on The Catcher in the Rye. A temporary restraining issue was issued, but the judge reserved judgment on the fair use issues raised.

#2: J. A. Konrath, author of Whiskey Sour and other novels, weighs in on the price of ebooks: “The rules of supply and demand don’t work in a digital world, because the supply is unlimited. You don’t fight piracy with weapons. You fight piracy with cost and convenience.” Exactly!

#3: One of the advantages of the Kindle is supposed to be that your library of books you’ve bought is always there for you to download so you don’t have to keep copies of every single book on your Kindle. Well, apparently the downloads aren’t unlimited. If you download a book too many times Amazon won’t allow the download and you’ll have to pay for the book again. Be sure to read the next article in the saga (linked at the bottom of the first article). It seems even Amazon doesn’t know what’s going on. More on Kindle DRM issues.

#4: A very good assessment on How the eBook Industry Isn’t Like the Music Industry.

Enjoy! (I’d like to know what the book is like if anyone reads it–I am Kindle-less). I found this tip on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (an excellent blog, if you’re not already familiar with it).