Amazon.com has stopped directly selling books from Macmillan and its imprints (including Tor Books) in a dispute about ebook pricing.
Macmillan CEO John Sargent has issued a statement. His vision for pricing is:
Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.
Amazon by contrast wants a maximum $9.99 fixed price for eBooks that for now can only be read on a Kindle.
Hovering over all this is the Apple iPad and its iBooks Store. The NY Times states:
Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same “agency” model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the retailer. Macmillan said Amazon could continue to buy e-books under its current wholesale model, paying the publisher 50 percent of the hardcover list price while pricing the e-book at any level Amazon chooses, but that Macmillan would delay those e-book editions by seven months after hardcover release. Amazon’s removal of Macmillan titles on Friday appears to be a direct reaction to that.
Some reaction by Tor related writes and editors:
- Patrick Nielsen Hayden, a Tor Editor
- John Scalzi
- Charles Stross
Update - feb 1, 2010
Amazon.com has posted a message stating they will have to agree to Macmillan's pricing scheme, which was probably what they planned to do once they had Macmillan fingered as the party wanting higher prices.