So there! Bezos seems to be stamping his foot again.
It’s big news in books that Bezos today decides to ‘punish’ a major publisher for not agreeing with his idea of loss leader pricing. Some related to Amazon’s sudden and unannounced sucking of Orwell’s 1984 right out of people’s pricey Kindle boxes, saying much later it was an illegally uploaded edition… apparently pulling ‘buy’ buttons from authors’ works is Amazon’s idea of good business. It isnt the first time. It was done to another publisher at Amazon last year.
Interesting to see how it will play out.
From Publisher’s Lunch, which is a pay subscription site.
“As originally reported last night and many readers know by now, sometime yesterday evening the buy buttons for apparently all of Macmillan’s books–including bestsellers and top releases, and Kindle editions–were removed from Amazon’s site. Macmillan books remain listed but can be bought only through third-party Marketplace sellers, while Macmillan Kindle titles all lead to pages that read, “We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site.”
“It is the first shot across the purchasing bow in big publishers’ efforts to reset ebook pricing above the loss-leader $9.99 price point and retake control over that pricing by moving from the wholesale selling model to an agency selling model (first reported exclusively in Lunch Deluxe on January 19), at least for ebooks published simultaneously with new hardcover releases. Kindle customers further reported on Amazon forums that any Macmillan books that were on their “wish lists” disappeared from those lists with no explanation, as apparently did Macmillan sample chapters that had been downloaded previously.
“Macmillan has commented by way of a paid message to authors, illustrators and agents, [trying to inform the authors as quickly as possible. ed note].
Amazon has declined to comment thus far, either to the media or directly to their customers.