Amazon and Hachette have settled their long-running dispute, and Amazon is reinstating preorder buttons for Hachette titles and resuming normal promotional activity for the titles. The settlement was announced in a joint release today. The new multi-year agreement covers U.S. print and ebook sales, according to the announcement.
Hachette, which won the public relations side of the dispute, tied the settlement to its authors. "This is great news for writers," Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch said. "The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come."
Amazon’s statement by Kindle VP David Naggar tied the settlement to lower prices on e-books, a key issue in the dispute. "We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we believe will be a great win for readers and authors alike," he said.
The only terms that were revealed were that Hachette "will have responsibility for setting consumer prices of its ebooks, and will also benefit from better terms when it delivers lower prices for readers."
Amazon had come under increasing pressure from authors, who largely (although not universally) sided with Hachette, and was seen by some as having lower earnings as a result of its dispute (see "Amazon Earnings Highlight Supplier Wars"). Amazon had recently settled a similar (although less acrimonious) dispute with Simon & Schuster, another Big Five book house.
The new agreement takes effect in early 2015, but clears the way for a normal level of Amazon sales of Hachette titles during the all-important holiday season.
The settlement has been reached, but it apparently is taking some time to implement, because as of this writing, backlist Yen titles such as Black Butler were still showing two to three-week delivery times. Amazon does have a pre-order button for Black Butler Vol. 19, however, which was not the case while the dispute was ongoing.
Pre-Order Buttons Back
Posted by ICv2 on November 13, 2014 @ 12:20 pm CT
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