14 DAY TRIAL // The spat between Amazon and Hachette is flaring up again and taking a turn as the ecommerce giant is inviting people to tell the book publisher that its book prices are too high.
The retailer has now published an open letter to readers and publishers in which it admonishes Hachette for refusing to agree to a new contract, painting a rather ugly picture for the publisher, making it look like it’s just a big business too set in its way to admit that asking $15 (€11.2) to $20 (€15) for an e-book is unreasonable.
Amazon compares the evolution from printed books to e-books to the transition from hard cover to paperbacks, before the World War II, when the latter cost 25 cents instead of $2.50 (€1.86). Not only, they say, did publishers believe then that paperbacks would destroy literary culture and harm the industry, but they also resisted change, much as Hachette does nowadays.
“Amazon and Hachette – a big US publisher and part of a $10 billion (€7.46 billion) media conglomerate – are in the middle of a business dispute about e-books. We want lower e-book prices. Hachette does not. Many e-books are being released at $14.99 (€11.2) and even $19.99 (€15). That is unjustifiably high for an e-book. With an e-book, there’s no printing, no over-printing, no need to forecast, no returns, no lost sales due to out of stock, no warehousing costs, no transportation costs, and there is no secondary market – e-books cannot be resold as used books. E-books can and should be less expensive,” the company writes.
Amazon reminds readers that Hachette has been caught illegally working with its competitors to raise e-book prices for which it has already been paid $166 million (€124 million) in penalties and restitution.
Furthermore, Amazon once more explains that people are more likely to buy a $9.99 (€7.46) e-book rather than a $14.99 (€11.2) book and publishers would actually sell more copies by setting the price lower. “If customers would buy 100,000 copies of a particular e-book at $14.99 (€11.2), then customers would buy 174,000 copies of the same e-book at $9.99 (€7.46),” Amazon writes.
The giant online seller mentions a petition that was started by a group of authors and aimed at Hachette, which attracted 7,600 signatures. In the petition titled “Stop Fighting Low Prices and Fair Wages,” authors and readers support Amazon in the effort of keeping prices low.
There have been three different offers Amazon has made to Hachette so far. The first suggested that both companies make author royalties whole during the dispute, especially since it had already been three months since sales had been blocked.
Then, the company suggested that authors receive 100% of all sales of their titles until the dispute was resolved, followed by another proposal to return to normal business operations, but to share both their business revenues with a literacy charity. Hachette rejected everything.
Amazon has, however, taken a controversial step through sharing the email address of Michael Pietsch, Hachette CEO, asking readers to help them fight for reasonable e-book prices.