The one significant factor in Penguin Random House’s US performance not mentioned in yesterday’s half-year report from Bertelsmann was the artificial boost to ebook sales while the house stood alone since mid-April as the only big trade publisher that still allowed significantly discounting on their ebook prices. (Harper returned to full agency in mid-April; HBG on February 1; and Macmillan and Simon & Schuster in early January.) But as of today, September 1, PRH has followed their peers in returning to full agency ebook pricing in the US (except, as required by the court, Apple retains discretion to discount, and competitors […]
Agency
Houghton Moves to Some Kind of Agency
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt appears to have reached a new ebook sales agreement with Amazon and looks to be working with a modified form of agency across their ebook accounts now. Like their peers, the company declined to discuss their retailer terms. But the Amazon listings are a fairly reliable guide. All of HMH’s ebooks are now listed on Amazon with the telltale indication that “this price was set by the publisher.” From our analysis of multiple price listings, when Amazon lists only a print price and a Kindle price, they seem to be selling the ebook at HMH’s stipulated consumer digital […]
Authors Guild Addresses “Inadequate e-Book Royalties”
As part of their series of Fair Contract Initiative communications, the Authors Guild has a long post on “today’s inadequate e-book royalties,” asserting that “half of net proceeds is the fair royalty rate for e-books.” The post acknowledges one of the big structural obstacles to change: “Major book publishers have agreed to include ‘most favored nation’ clauses in thousands of existing contracts. These clauses require automatic adjustment or renegotiation of e-book royalties if the publisher changes its standard royalty rate, giving publishers a strong incentive to maintain the status quo.” Despite that, the Guild notes there are modest variations: “Some bestselling […]
Corporate: A Penguin Random House/Amazon Deal, and A News Corp. Dividend
Amazon has confirmed (to both the Bookseller and PW) signing “new long term agreements with Penguin Random House in both the US and the UK,” ratifying that alarmist accounts of a standoff starting from a UK tech blog were, as expected, overblown. The important part is what was not disclosed: any change in fundamental ebook terms of sale now that PRH is no longer constrained by the US consent decree and the EU commitments. PRH says they “don’t discuss any aspect of our customer relationships” in public — and for now, agents we were able to contact had not heard anything […]
Amazon Resumes Limited Hachette Pre-Orders and Restores Some Discounts
For the first time since late May, Amazon customers can pre-order at least some titles from Hachette Book Group — principally Little, Brown books, set for imminent release (such as Kevin Pietersen’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY, publishing December 1) as well as books not scheduled until spring 2015 (including Cathy by John Carder Bush in April, and books by Susanna Gregory in February and March). From our searches Wednesday morning the restored pre-orders apply only to Little, Brown and have not been extended to Grand Central, FaithWords, Orbit or other HBG divisions. In addition, all of the prominent forthcoming releases highlighted on HBG’s own web site (James Patterson’s November Hope to Die and […]
Update re: Awkward Amazon Communications On Amazon/Hachette Business Interruption
As most of our readership has likely seen by now, on Tuesday afternoon the Amazon Books team put up another unsigned, closed to comment post (or what Barry Eisler would call a shameful “pointless, pernicious, promiscuous anonymity”) on the Kindle Forum. The post is said to offer “specific information about Amazon’s objectives” in their negotiations with Hachette Book Group. If you have not read the post yet, check it out. It raises many questions, among them: – Amazon is very careful with their words, even if not elegant. The post begins, “A key objective is lower e-book prices.” A lot of traditional […]