I was on my cellphone and moreover restricted when i sent the first very short model of this submit, but this clearly deserves a major replace. It’s being widely reported (I’ll embrace links later on) that Amazon and Hachette have reached an settlement after months of a messy contract negotiation that noticed Amazon discouraging prospects from buying Hachette books (by delaying them, placing adverts on the books’ pages for different books, eradicating the flexibility to pre-order them, not discounting as deeply, and, I feel maybe by not listing them on their books of the 12 months, apart from one…these are all allegations which have been made. I’m not seeing an announcement in the Amazon Kindle discussion board, yet, so I’ll be going by what is in the news as I look at the ramifications. Interestingly for readers, this appears to be a return to the "Agency Model", which means that Hachette will set the costs that customers pay for e-books. There has been confusion about that.

The U.S. Department of Justice went after the publishers that had used the Agency Model and forbade them from utilizing it… That wasn’t as a result of the Agency Model was in itself unlawful. It was because they'd, in response to the DoJ, used it to do unlawful issues. I mentioned earlier than that it was form of like a baseball bat. You'll be able to personal a baseball bat, and you may carry it around. However, if ten of you got collectively and used baseball bats to inflict harm on any individual, free ebooks a choose would possibly say that you ten can’t have them. I’ll admit: Kindle this makes me uneasy. The Agency Model, by its nature, reduces price competitors. If the writer units the consumer price at multiple gross sales channels, it’s unlikely that it will likely be lower at one than at another. Amazon has always used the ability of discounting, and this just about takes that out of the image for the e-tailer. That’s attributed to an Amazon executive, David Naggar.

It says clearly to me that Hachette gets to set the prices. I’m guessing the incentives could be Amazon agreeing to take a decrease cut at completely different worth points. Hypothetically: "Price the books underneath $10, and we’ll take a 30% cut. The logic behind that, which Amazon has explained, is that many extra of the books will sell at $9.Ninety nine than $15, in order that they make up the difference on volume. I’m happy to see it settled, but I nonetheless don’t prefer it. As a former brick and mortar bookstore supervisor, I don’t like the concept of the publishers setting the costs. The store proprietor/manager ought to do that, it appears to me. Publishers don’t have the expertise at doing it, and i see that as a problem. Another large concern for me is how nimble they are going to be. When one thing huge occurs within the information, a store can slash the costs on all related books… ’s say a celeb announces an engagement.

A retailer would possibly give 10% off on all of the books about that celebrity… A publisher doesn’t have the same motivation to make someone a customer of a selected retailer. They’d most likely have to run the idea by means of a pricing committee, which seems at all the stores, runs projections… I’m not saying it would happen that manner, just that I’m involved. I suppose all of the big publishers might rent retail pricing managers… One query is whether Hachette will strike this similar deal with different massive e-ebook retailers… Amazon has now reached agreements with Simon & Schuster and Hachette, leaving three of the large Five to go: HarperCollins

Edit

Pub: 16 Oct 2025 19:36 UTC

Views: 4