Amazon Folds Like A Lawn Chair to Macmillan eBook Pricing Demands

In a sudden and awkward about face, Amazon posted an announcement that it will be folding to demands by Macmillan to begin charging $15 for the publisher's e-books, as opposed to Amazon's standard pricing of $9.99.

Last week, Amazon pulled Macmillan's books from the Kindle store in protest over the publisher's request for the bookseller to raise prices of their titles from $10 to $15 dollars.

"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." Amazon wrote in a public announcement on their website.

The Amazon vs. Macmillan debacle came to a crashing halt less than five days after Apple unveiled it's new iPad device, announcing that it intends to sell Apple iBooks through a special iPad app. With Apple's e-book model, publishers will be able to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction titles. Similar to the deal with app developers, Apple will keep 30 percent of each sale from their iBookstore, and publishers will take 70 percent.

Once Apple begins selling its iBooks at higher prices, it's possible that publishers might decide to withhold their titles from Amazon if the company chooses to continue discounting the books to $9.99. I would expect that e-book readers will ultimately vote with their wallets, determining what they consider a fair price for content by consuming less e-books costing more. But that's yet to be seen.

"Publishers are actually gonna pull their books from Amazon, because they're not happy with them." Steve Jobs said at Apple's iPad event last Wednesday.

Steve Jobs hinted that electronic books purchased through Apple's iBookstore or Amazon.com would ultimately be priced the same. It's obvious Mr. Jobs was foreshadowing Macmillan's displeasure with Amazon's e-book pricing model when he made comments to Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg, after Apple's iPad event concluded. We featured that candid video of Jobs here on Friday.

Two days later Amazon announced that Macmillan books were being pulled from the Kindle store. Or not! Because now they're back. With the exception of Random House, five of the six largest publishers are in favor of Apple's iBook pricing scheme, including — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster— which have all signed on to provide e-book content for the "magical" iPad tablet device.

[TechCrunch]

Comments

[cheap r4 dsi]

A new development in the Amazon vs. Macmillan fiasco. Amazon just posted an announcement indicating that it will be “capitulating” to Macmillan by selling the publishers’ books for their desired prices. Amazon and publisher Macmillan got into a disagreement over what eBooks should cost you. The argument resulted in all Macmillan books being taken off the Amazon store, then put back at a higher price.

[Joe]

Please get your facts right. The $15 price only applies to the most expensive books - new release best sellers, for example, Some books will have a lower price ($5 or 6).