Navigating a Tightrope With Amazon

[Commentary] The e-book “After Friday Night Lights” was pulled from Amazon after Amazon made the work available for free. It had been priced at $2.99 but the plan hit a pothole after Apple, which had been looking to get into shorter works in a digital format, decided to include e-books in a promotion that it does with Starbucks. It selected the digital sequel as a Pick of the Week, giving customers a code they could redeem online for the book. (The author said he still received a royalty of $1.50 for each copy sold.) Amazon interpreted the promotion as a price drop and lowered its price for “After Friday Night Lights” to exactly zero. Byliner, the e-book’s publisher, withdrew the book from Amazon’s shelves, saying it did so to “protect our authors’ interest.”