Macmillan ceo John Sargent has commented on what happens next between the publisher and Amazon, a first answer to the what kind of timeline “ultimately” means for the restoration of buy buttons: “We are in discussions with Amazon on how best to resolve our differences. They are now, have been, and I suspect always will be one of our most valued customers.”
Archives for January 2010
Plus the Macmillan Titles Amazon Kept Selling All Along
Before Amazon posted their announcement about their intention to give in to Macmillan’s new terms, we were working on this piece. Even when Amazon removed buy buttons from Macmillan’s trade division titles, they kept selling books from Macmillan’s Palgrave line. Primarily a scholarly publisher, in recent years Palgrave has also expanded its trade books. Not only did the buy buttons stay active for the Palgrave trade titles, for those new releases with Kindle editions, Amazon was already selling the ebook versions for the “needlessly high” as they would put it price $15 in many cases. As we have written many […]
Amazon: "ultimately, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms"
Could publishers have triumphed so quickly with their strategy to use Apple’s entry into the market to move to an agency model for selling ebooks? (Note that the etailer says “ultimately.” Immediately after posting this “announcement,” disabled Macmillan buy buttons had not been restored yet.) Early Sunday evening, The Amazon Kindle team has just posted this to a forum on their site: Dear Customers: Macmillan, one of the “big six” publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions […]
Macmillan Has No. 1 Bestseller–At BN.com
By Sunday afternoon Andrew Young’s just-released THE POLITICIAN from Thomas Dunne Books, a unit of Macmillan, rose to No. 1-bestseller status at Barnesandnoble.com. The book, which ranked as high as No. 4 at Amazon, has declined to No. 24 at the site–not surprising, since as a Macmillan title is not available for sale there. Another clear riser is Hilary Mantel’s WOLF HALL, which has fallen from No. 69 at Amazon recently down to No. 174, while in turn moving up at BN.com, cracking their top 100 at 73, well up from its sales rank of 271 on January 29.BN bestseller […]
To: All Macmillan authors/illustrators and the literary agent community
Editors’ note: This message ran as a paid advertisement in a special Saturday edition of Publishers Lunch To: All Macmillan authors/illustrators and the literary agent communityFrom: John Sargent This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for e books under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed […]
The Battle Over the Agency Model Begins, As Amazon Pulls Macmillan Buy Buttons
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 […]