Amazon Pulls Publishing Group's Titles
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Wall Street Journal
Amazon.com Inc. has pulled from its Kindle e-book store nearly 5,000 titles distributed by a group representing more than 500 independent publishers following a dispute over terms.
Amazon stopped selling the Kindle titles Monday evening, said Mark Suchomel, president of the Independent Publishers Group, although it continues to sell the group's physical titles. Mr. Suchomel said the group had been negotiating for a new e-book contract with Amazon but that the retailer wanted more favorable terms. "They decided that what they were getting last week is no longer good enough this week," said Mr. Suchomel.
He declined to be more specific. Publishing terms generally cover such areas as wholesale pricing, advertising, and payment requirements. In some e-book deals, publishers set the retail price but that isn't the case with the digital titles distributed by Independent Publishers Group, where Amazon sets the retail price.
A person familiar with the situation said that the terms offered to Amazon by Independent Publishers Group were not as favorable as terms available from rival book distributors. Mr. Suchomel said his terms are in line with those of his rivals.
The move reflects an increasingly fractious book-selling landscape, where retailers are showing a willingness to flex their muscles by dropping certain titles. Last month Barnes & Noble Inc., unhappy about Amazon's attempts to sign exclusive deals with publishers and authors, said it would not sell in its stores any books published by Amazon.
Amazon's latest actions are significant because they send a message to distributors and publishers that it is willing to delist digital books at a time when e-books are the fastest growing segment of the publishing business. "It wouldn't seem that the aggregate revenue of the publishers involved could add up to a significant amount of volume," said Amy Rhodes, a partner at Market Partners International Inc., a consultancy. "It would seem to be more about message sending than actual economics."
"I'm disappointed to say the least," said Cynthia Sherry, publisher of the Chicago Review Press, a sister company to Independent Publishers Group within Chicago Press Review Inc. "This is a classic squabble over price. It's especially disturbing because books have cultural significance, and people expect them to be made widely available."
The development was first reported by the book-industry publication Publishers Marketplace.
Mr. Suchomel said that the disputed titles represent less than 10% of his group's total revenue. It distributes only a modest number of fiction and romance titles, areas that have proven extremely popular in the e-book format.
