Everyone seems to have shut up about the Andrew “The Jackal” Wylie – Odyssey Editions – Amazon brouhaha, but there was one new, eloquent statement about it all yesterday, from American Booksellers Association head Oren Teicher, posted at the ABA’s Bookselling This Week:

The issues sparked by evolving business models in the rapidly developing world of digital publishing are multifaceted and, at times, complex. However, from the perspective of independent booksellers one important reality is unchanged: Diminishing the availability of titles and narrowing the options for readers can only harm our society in the long run. That the Wylie agency has sought to distribute these works through a single retailer is bad for the book industry and bad for consumers. Books — in whatever format — are crucibles of ideas and unique expression, and we should be doing all that we can to expand, not constrict, readers’ access to them.