Macmillan Says Amazon Removes All Macmillan E-Books

[Sola Osofisan]

How long Amazon will continue not to sell Macmillan titles – and whether the move will spread to other publishers who also want Amazon to charge more for e-books – remains unclear. The move could be only temporary. Amazon has marketed its Kindle e-reader by trumpeting its wide selection of books.

Macmillan was one of five major publishers which announced they would begin selling their e-books on Apple's new iBooks store, a key feature of the iPad. Publishers have agreed to a new pricing model with Apple, under which they will set their own e-book prices, with Apple taking 30% of the revenue. They are expected to price many e-book titles at $12.99 and $14.99, with fewer carrying the $9.99 price that Amazon currently charges on most best-sellers.

More (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704491604575035763513529030.html)

[Sola Osofisan]

These chaps will do anything to maintain the status quo, which is all about profit and nothing else. How can they justify selling "e-book titles at $12.99 and $14.99"? Your expenditure on paper, printing, warehousing, transportation and so much has been completely eliminated. How do you still markup to $14.99 per ebook?

They resisted the ebook for years and now the tech advancement is forcing them to reappraise their business model...

On the other hand, one cannot prescribe to them how much a book should be. The market will in time.

[Sola Osofisan]

The ten-dollar e-book may soon be gone, replaced by the fifteen-dollar eBook.

Last week, VentureBeat broke the news that Amazon had removed all Macmillan titles from its U.S. site and its Kindle downloads. You could look up the books, but you could only buy them from third party sellers, not from Amazon.

The move turned out to be a reaction against Macmillan’s shift from a wholesale-retail relationship with Amazon to what the book industry calls an “agency model” for Macmillan’s e-books.

The term has nothing to do with the book agents who wrangle writers. Rather, it means that Macmillan now treats Amazon as a selling agent, not a retailer. That means Macmillan gets to set the price of its e-book titles on Amazon. In return, Macmillan claimed in a public statement, Amazon will now get a larger commission from each e-book sale.

What this means for you: Macmillan e-books will not longer be $9.99 on Amazon, a loss-leader price designed to drive adoption of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. Instead, Macmillan will demand $14.99 to $15.99 per e-book, with new bestsellers possibly going for $12.99.

Since last week, two more publishers have switched to an agency model for e-books. HarperCollins and Hachette, two very large and very powerful publishers, have also moved against Amazon’s $9.99 price.

Unlike Macmillan, Amazon has not removed these publishers’ books. An Amazon statement last week said, “We will have to accept Macmillan’s terms.” Obviously, the same goes for Hachette and HarperCollins.

More (http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/05/hachette-amazon-harpercollins-macmillan-apple/)