Macmillan Books to Return to Amazon, Prices to Rise to iPad iBooks Level, Consumers to Vote with their Wallets

Both Mcmillan and Amazon have issued statements about the story linked to previously, wherein they stopped selling Macmillan e-books after the publisher wanted to raise the price for best-sellers to an agency model $12.99 to $14.99 — which Apple had already agreed to for iBooks on the iPad.

Mcmillan’s CEO, John Sargent’s comments ran as a paid advertisement in the Sunday edition of PublishersLunch and read in part:

Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced within $14.99 and $12.99. E books will nearly always seem day on term with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic by day.

The agency model would allow Amazon to prepare more money selling our books, not less. We would invent less money in our dealings with Amazon under the new model. Our disagreement is not about short-term profitability but rather about the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market.

Amazon’s response can be found in full on Engadget

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms considering Macmillan has a monopoly by their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s fair to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for certain that many independent presses and self-published authors will see that as an opportunity to supply attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

So what do you think? Will the publishers be able to raise prices or will the market — or lack thereof for higher priced e-books — force them back down again?

[PublishersLunch via BoingBoing via Engadget]

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Macmillan Books to Return to Amazon, Prices to Rise to iPad iBooks Level, Consumers to Vote with their Wallets