In the continuing pricing war of ebooks, Amazon's Kindle
fires the next volley.
Macmillan Publishing, part of the Macmillan Group, fired the first round, announcing to Amazon that their continued pricing of $9.99 or less for ebooks was unacceptable and explained that Macmillan was going to reassess its business model for the list price of all MP ebook titles. Amazon was told that it would have to use that pricing or lose access to Macmillan titles. The New York Times reported that this was in part due to an agreement signed with Apple/Macintosh in conjunction with the release of the new iPad and Apple's new iBookstore, which will allow publishers to set their own pricing for ebooks.
Amazon's first reaction was to pull all Macmillan titles from its roster, leaving only 3rd party sales through their Zshops and Marketplace. However, Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos reconsidered and Macmillan titles were back for sale. Today (Sunday, 1/31/2010), Bezos made the following statement through Amazon's Kindle Community:
"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!"
Macmillan has not yet responded to this latest announcement.
Comments
We just got Kindle and haven't got the Ipad yet and the books for Kindle from US titles are not available here as far as I know. I think everyone wants a piece of the pie, which is normal, but ultimately the real loser will the regular books and the book buying public and the authors. Visutally impaired and blind users can't really use either Ipad or Kindle as they don't not accept Jaws Zoom text or other screen readeing devices I'm.
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