Following a very public feud over ebook pricing, Amazon has caved to Macmillan, giving the publisher it’s desired $14.99 price point for ebooks. The switch came after Macmillan threatened to pull all future publications from Amazon’s Kindle Store if it wasn’t given flexibility with regard to price.

Amazon announced the news to its customers with the following statement:

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 of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

Kindle is a business for Amazon, and it is also a mission. We never expected it to be easy!

Thank you for being a customer.

I can’t help but feel Amazon is making an irrelevant appeal to the Kindle consumer base. By and large these will be people with more money to spend on books, considering they’ve dropped a couple hundred bucks up front to gain access to the titles. If they really want one of the books, would the consumer base really not buy because of a $15 price tag, one that’s still far cheaper than the hardback option? Probably not.

As a writer, I’m reassured to see publishers taking the reins on this one.

Source: Amazon

At some point yesterday Amazon pulled any ebooks from publisher Macmillan due to a pricing dispute, according to the New York Times. Apparently Macmillan wanted to raise prices from $9.99 to $15 and Amazon didn’t approve.

You might remember the same thing happening as iTunes was starting to get its legs. Apple used its massive marketshare to strong arm media companies to the $.99 price point, which most everyone felt was too low. Obviously that model has worked out in Apple’s favor, if not in the favor of most record labels, a few of which were able to strike more flexible deals.

There is one major difference – Macmillan has somewhere to go. Apple is just about to open the iBook Store for its new iPad, which, in all likelihood, is going to outsell the Kindle by quite a bit. Most estimates put the Kindle’s installed base around 3 million. The iPad could easily have that by the end of this year.

I would be pretty surprised, though, if Jobs was willing to give Amazon the price advantage in the ebook war.

Source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/amazon-pulls-macmillan-books-over-e-book-price-disagreement/

It’s not a revolutionary concept. You want some visibility so you offer what would normally be a paid service or product for free. As word of mouth grows, you bump the price back to normal levels, occasionally higher, and profit. Easy enough.

That’s what many book publishers are starting to do with titles on the Kindle, the New York Times reported this weekend. The article focuses on Maureen Johnson, an author whose young adult fiction has climbed as high as number three on the Kindle best-selling charts. It’s being run for free on the device to drive interest in her upcoming sequel, which will release this February.

While some publishers – Random House and Scholastic for two – embrace the free model, others, like Hachette, find it “illogical.” They believe the price of ebooks is already too low, so why go any lower? In fact, a lot of publishers delay ebook publication for a few months after a book’s release to capitalize on hardcover sales.

Obviously, as time goes on, we’re going to see publishers get more and more creative to keep profits up in the face of lower prices for retail media.

The NY Times published an interesting article today that details the struggle between classic authors and their respective publishing houses for ebook rights. The article is focused on William Styron, author of great books like Sophie’s Choice and Darkness Visible and his family’s struggle to maintain rights to the digital versions of those books.

It’s not that no one saw ebooks coming. They did. In fact, most titles published after 1994 have the rights for ebooks laid out in full detail. But there were a whole lot of books published before 1994, Styron’s books among them. As much as Styron’s family may want control of those titles for the digital age, the publishers are doing everything they legally can to maintain control. Random House recently sent out letters to authors and literary agents claiming control of the works, arguing that ebooks fall under the same category as books, so the rights extend to digital works.

It gets messier from there. In 2002 a judge in Manhattan ruled in the authors’ favor, but that’s probably not going to stop big publishing. In the mean time Styron’s family, like many others, have turned to third parties with the rights, trying to get things published before publishing houses can get a hold of the work.

Source: New York Times

If you didn’t pre-order your Nook, you won’t be seeing a holiday arrival. Barnes & Noble announced today that it had sold through the initial order and wouldn’t have more before the holidays are out.

“While we increased production based on the high consumer interest, we’ve sold out of our initial Nook allotment available for delivery before the holidays,” said a company statement. It’s not a huge delay – any order placed from today forward will be filled on January 4th. Anyone who pre-orders up to that date will receive a holiday certificate. Sometimes those are the best gifts. Right when you thought the festivities were over there’s a package on your doorstep.

B&N announced the delay after Sony did the same for its “Daily Edition” ereader yesterday. Despite the high price of ebooks and still limited functionality, ereaders seem to be one of the hottest items on the world’s gift list. Amazon’s Kindle and Kindle DX are both in stock and ship immediately.

Source: Reuters