A shout-out to Matt Norcross of McLean & Eakin, who alerted us to a battle that flared up over the weekend between Amazon and Macmillan. Amazon pulled all Macmillan titles from sale on its website to show its displeasure with Macmillan's new agency plan, which would set higher rates (about $15.99) on new ebooks.
Amazon currently sells most ebooks at $9.99 or lower, a price $4 to $5 dollars below cost. Publishers are concerned that the long-term effect of Amazon's actions will create unrealistically low price expectations among consumers and lead to drastic changes in the whole book industry which would effectively eliminate wholesalers and bricks and mortar bookstores from the supply chain between author and consumer.
The issue had supposedly already been "settled" by Sunday night, when Amazon announced it was restoring Macmillan titles to its website because, as they said in a letter to Kindle users, Macmillan "had a monopoloy" on its titles.
But word this afternoon is that despite its statement, Amazon has not yet restored clickability to Macmillan titles. In fact, their "disappearing" of Macmillan titles went even further than the Amazon site. In a move similar to Amazon's heavy handed move last summer, when it removed a couple of titles from Kindle owners' devices, without notifying users, Amazon went onto their Kindles and removed Macmillan titles from their wish lists and removed blocked any sample chapters of Macmillan titles.
Keep an eye on this issue. It affects everyone's future, including yours.
Shelf Awareness has a long and enlightening section with all the nasty details in today's issue. And
PW Daily had more to add to it this afternoon.
Norcross urges booksellers to support Macmillan's courageous position by creating special displays and handselling Macmillan titles. We've included a photo of one he put up in their store on Saturday.
