Amazon has raised the white flag in the first skirmish over ebook pricing. The victors in this first round could be publisher Macmillan and rival ebook-reader maker Apple. After temporarily stopping selling Macmillan titles over a pricing dispute, the online book-seller said it was capitulating to the publisher’s demands.
“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 announced on its Kindle Community forums.
The Seattle-based Amazon said Macmillan “clearly communicated” that they wanted to charge between $12.99 and $14.99 for e-books of bestsellers and hardcover editions. Monday morning, Amazon’s website displayed the message “Tell the publisher I’d like to read this book on the Kindle” when searching for Macmillan’s best-selling tell-all “The Politician.”
Amazon, which wants to sell ebooks for $9.99, couched its reversal on pricing as a victory for smaller publishers. The Internet company said “many independent presses and self-published authors will see this an an opportunity to provide attractively priced ebooks as an alternative.”
One day after Apple unveiled the iPad, Macmillan CEO John Sargent travelled to Seattle to talk “new terms of sa;es for ebooks” with Amazon, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. A day after the talks, Amazon pulled direct sales of the publisher’s books.
[Via WSJ and AppleInsider]
