The rock-bottom pricing of the e-book of Tony Blair's memoir, which is being sold for under £7 by Amazon, has thrown the issue of the bargain-basemen...

If you read the N.Y.Times in its coverage of the disruption of the Kindle, you might think that publishers are losing a fortune from the sudden rise in Kindle sales. Actually, the opposite is true.

Why do we sell books as if they were potatoes when many of them are actually more like truffles? Hard coal, everyday sea salt, water, topsoil. They go for the same price, everywhere, because it's all the same.

Amazon and Wal-Mart hardly seem reckless, though. So why did they go to war? The answer is that they didn't, really. Sure, Wal-Mart is making a statem...