There's been so much clutter–some good, some misinformed– about the Macmillan/Amazon dispute that, with a nod to my old biz school days, I thought I might as well weigh in with mine.

Without sounding abstract, the underlying issues of what's involved result from two economic laws.

First, publishing is pretty much a "zero-sum" game. That means there's no real growth from any sector of the market–new technologies included– that doesn't basically just offset some other sector by an equal amount...