Amazon has backed down in the first war of Kindle
pricing. Publishers Macmillan were furious over the huge mark-up
that Amazon were changing for Kindle books. The row escalated over the weekend when Amazon decided to pull a
pre-emptive strike and remove all the publisher's books including physical ones.
Macmillan is one of the biggest US publishers (imprints
include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Tor/Forge, Henry Holt, and St. Martin’s
Press) so pulling it was never going to
be economically viable for anyone. The argument is about who gets to set book prices and
prices for hardcover books. Amazon believes it should decide. Book publishers
while book publishers say they are only a distributor and stop being so up
themselves.
Authors Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi, waded into the row
and slagged off Amazon who they said had cured them o any desire to ever get a
Kindle. “If Amazon is willing to play chicken with my economic
well-being — and the economic well-being of many of my friends — to lock up its
little corner of the ebook field, well, that’s its call to make. But, you know
what, I remember people who are happy to trample my ass into the dirt as
they’re rushing to grab at cash,” they penned.
CEO of Macmillan, John Sargent, has posted a letter with
his point of view said that he met with Amazon last week and gave them our
proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will
become effective in early March. In addition, When he got back to New York he
was informed me they were taking all Macmillan books off the Kindle site, and
off Amazon.
Now Amazon has backed down and said it will start selling
Macmillan books on its Web site again and give in to the publisher’s demands to
charge more for titles on the Kindle digital reader. The freeze in sales was to show the “seriousness of our
disagreement,” Amazon.com said in a notice on its Web site yesterday. Under the new terms, Macmillan wants to be able to set
the prices of electronic books individually, with most new titles costing
$12.99 to $14.99. Amazon.com charges $9.99 for most best-sellers and new
releases. Retailers would get a 30
percent commission under the proposal, Macmillan said.
With prices like that we would think that Macmillan would have a job selling digital editions when
you can get the real thing for the same price.