An outsider’s guide to Amazon vs Macmillan. Charlie Stross writes:

… to customers, Amazon would like to be a monopoly (i.e. the only store in town). To suppliers, Amazon would like to be a monopsony (i.e. the only customer in town). Their goal is to profit via arbitrage, and if they can achieve those twin goals they will own everyubody’s nuts — the authors, the customers, everyone. They are, in fact, exactly the kind of middle-man operation that the internet tends to squish, gooily.

It’s also worth noting that Amazon is the only company on the market that doesn’t do ePub. Everyone else – Sony, Apple, Baen, is going with the format, and ePub doesn’t force DRM down anybody’s throats.