why MacMillan won even though Amazon's position was better?

[acroyear]

Why are people vilifying Amazon and supporting MacMillian in this?

Two reasons:
1) Because MacMillan got to the press first.
2) Because rather than threaten to hurt the user base (the way the cable companies usually win during negotiations with networks), they actually hurt the users. the books were pulled, simple as that, without real warning, and people stood up, noticed, and bitched.

Had Amazon gone to the customer base FIRST and said "MacMillan is trying to charge you more money, what do you say to that?", they might have actually won this one. But rather than do that they f'ed up EXACTLY as they did the Orwell ebooks situation, and just did something rather than go the the media over it.

Amazon f'ed up by trying to play it silently, and MacMillan controlled the message and won the media coverage war because of it.

Take that as a hint, politicians: if you don't talk about something, you can't control the spin that your opponent will inevitably put on it.

Comments

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

Take that as a hint, politicians: if you don't talk about something, you can't control the spin that your opponent will inevitably put on it.

The only politicians who don't know this rule are either the very new ones or the very stupid ones.

Chris Matthews, who wrote a book about these things back in 1988 when he was sane, titled it "Hang a lantern on your problem."