Archive for the ‘Kindle UK’ Category
Amazon adopts agency model in UK with three publishers no comments
The Bookseller reports that Amazon UK has switched to the agency model with three publishers — Hachette, Harper Collins and Penguin. Canongate, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster have also signed on to the agency model but have not yet started using it to set the prices of their ebooks.
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Kindle 3 for New Zealand; eBook Price War Heating Up in UK no comments
New Zealand is finally being included in the Kindle family with the introduction of the new Kindle 3 ereaders. The Kindle 3 can be ordered from and shipped to New Zealand. Orders placed now for the Kindle 3 will ship on Sept. 10, 2010. The 6-inch latest generation Kindle with 3G + Wi-Fi is $189 USD and the Wi-Fi only Kindle 3 is $139. The Kindle 3 for New Zealand will not come with an AC adaptor, but will include a USB cable to use for charging. There will initially be 380,000 English-language ebooks available from Amazon for Kiwis to choose from.
The ebook price war brought about by Amazon opening the UK Kindle Store continues to escalate. WH Smith has dropped the price of all of its ebooks by 50 percent and some top selling fiction titles are 66 percent off. Even so, many titles still seem to be slightly more expensive than Amazon’s. Waterstones’ ebook prices seem to be the highest of the three on the titles I checked.
Amazon launched its UK Kindle Store earlier this month with over 400,000 titles. I have not been able to find any hard numbers as to how many ebooks are offered by WH Smith, whose ebook store is powered by Overdrive. Waterstones seems to only have a little over 30,000 ebooks available.
WH Smith has also lowered its price on the Sony Pocket Edition Reader to £99 to match the £99.99 price over at Waterstones.
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Amazon DLP Comes to UK no comments
Amazon announced today that publishers and authors can now use the Kindle Digital Text Platform to upload an make their books available in the UK Kindle Store. From the press release:
"Publishers and authors can now take advantage of the Kindle Digital Text Platform and make their books available to the millions of customers that visit Amazon.co.uk," said Greg Greeley, Amazon Vice President, European Retail. "Sales of Kindle books in the US continue to rise and we are now selling more Kindle books than hardcovers. We expect to see a similar pattern in the UK with publishers and authors benefitting from greatly increased sales as a result of adding their titles to the new Kindle Store via the Kindle Digital Text Platform."
Amazon recently made improvements to the Digital Text Platform such as a more intuitive ‘Bookshelf’ feature and a simplified process for publishing. Additionally, publishers and authors can upload and make available their books in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. They are also able to set the digital list price for their titles on Amazon.co.uk in pound sterling.
Publishers that hold publishing rights for the UK and related territories will earn a 35 per cent royalty for sales made on Amazon.co.uk. For sales made in the US via Amazon.com, publishers can take advantage of a 70 per cent royalty option. In the future, Amazon intends to make the 70 per cent royalty option available for UK sales as well.
