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.