Take this link from Jorgen to an article at the Wall Street Journal about some nasty market moves that were made by Amazon.com and Macmillan Publishing over the last few days.
Macmillan balked at Amazon’s pricing and was rewarded by Amazon removing all Macmillan titles from their sales lists. Then, following a high level exchange AMAZON BACKED DOWN. This power shift absolutely underlines the current flux in the eBook market caused by the recent arrival of the Apple Tablet. Amazon is doing what Macmillan wants. MacMillan wants to manipulate the market and encourage eBook Piracy. (Macmillan’s higher prices are dumb since Amazon’s $9.99 price per title is still considered too high by Kindle owners.)
The Amazon letter of surrender explains it:
“Dear Customers:
Macmillan, one of the “big six†publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.
We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.
Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!
Thank you for being a customer.â€
I love this line: “we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity.” Macmillan is continuing to make the same mistakes that got the rest of the traditional publishing world into so much trouble. Rather than evolve, they’re trying to force the market to follow outdated pricing structures and practices. In short, the same business model that forced traditional publishing into a decline:Â overpriced content, diminishing title selection, etc. etc. etc…
Incredible that Amazon would become the advocate for lower eBook prices. If anything, the arrival of the Apple Table seems to be waking the people up who made Amazon the market giant that it is.
Competition drives sales, increases selection and lowers prices.
Read Macmillan’s rebuttal at the link.
Such an exciting time in the revolution, yah?
2 pings
[…] to a story at Information Week about eBook prices ‘ratcheting’ up after Amazon’s dustup with Macmillan Publishing. Apparently, News Corp.’s HarperCollins and Hachette Book Group […]
[…] In an effort to hang onto its 90 percent share of the American e-book market, Amazon is starting to talk tough with publishers in the weeks leading up to the iPad’s arrival. If you’ll remember, Amazon already got into a dustup with publishers that resulted in the eBook retailer removing the ‘buy’ buttons from resistant publishers’ products, only to reverse their decision days later. That dispute involved the publishers insisting on price-hikes up from Amazon’s market-tested $9.99 per title. The publishers wanted to charge agency rates, and change their existing deals with Amazon to match new deals they were making with Apple. Amazon conceded. You can read some background on that fight here. […]