Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers

Amazon Pulls Macmillan Books Over E-Book Price Disagreement

As Venture Beat and other blogs have noticed Friday evening, books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United States, have vanished from Amazon.com.

The question is why.

I’ve talked to a person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute who says the disappearance is the result of a disagreement between Amazon.com and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon is expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books, said this person, who did not want to be
quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Is Amazon cutting off their nose to spite their face here or do they feel the gamble's worth it? Think of the lost revenue for them by not having McMillan books.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-boo...

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Permalink Reply by Kay Elizabeth on February 9, 2010 at 7:51pm

Amazon are now selling Macmillan books again and the pricing agreements reached haven't been made public. Amazon accepted a compromise which could be a hard lesson for them. It demonstrated that they are not as all powerful in the market as they think. Honestly I thought they would come out the winner here and Macmillan would be the ones to back down but it doesn't look like that's how it played out.

New York Times article on the settlement.