Harper Collins Next Publisher to Renegotiate with Amazon? no comments
During News Corporation’s earnings call on Tuesday, Rupert Murdoch had the following to say when asked about his perspective on the controversy over Apple vs Amazon ebook pricing:
We don’t like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99. They don’t pay us that. They pay us the full wholesale price of $14 or whatever we charge. We think it really devalues books and it hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books. We are not against [inaudible] books. On the contrary we like them very much indeed. It is low cost to us and so on. But we want some room to maneuver in it. Amazon, sorry Apple in its agreement with us which has not been disclosed in detail does allow for a variety of slightly higher prices.
There will be prices very much less than the printed copies of books but still will not be fixed in a way that Amazon has been doing it. It appears that Amazon is now ready to sit down with us again and renegotiate pricing.
News Corporation owns Harper Collins. It’s probably just a matter of time before the other major publishers follow Macmillan’s lead after the events of the past weekend. It’s too early to judge what the full impact will be, but most likely we will have to pay more to read newly released titles on our ereaders.
You can read the full transcript of the News Corp earnings call at Seeking Alpha.
