In a tumultuous few days, the first skirmish in the ebook price wars has been fought between Amazon and Macmillan in the US, with Macmillan seemingly coming out the winner of round one.
Along with last week's annoucement of Apple's iPad tablet and iBooks store came news of a new 'agency model' that five big US publishers had negotiated with Apple: a 70/30 revenue split with publishers setting the prices--and setting them higher than Amazon's preferred Kindle price of US$9.99.
Macmillan was the first publisher to go to Amazon and demand that they match these terms--Amazon said no, and all Macmillan titles, print and ebook--disappeared from Amazon US over the weekend.
The stand-off didn't last long, and within 48 hours Amazon announced that it disagreed profoundly with Macmillan's stance but said 'ultimately we will have to capitulate'.
Now Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corp, parent company of HarperCollins, has expressed his unhappiness with Amazon's US$9.99 price-point, indicating that 'now Amazon will have to sit down with us' and discuss differerent terms.
For links to many other postings on this dramatic story, see the link below.
