Growing tensions in the book publishing industry have led Amazon to block pre-orders from Hachette, the publisher home to popular writers such as Malcolm Gladwell and James Patterson.
The move by Amazon is the culmination of an ongoing contract dispute between the two, with Hachette believed to be taking a stand against Amazon demands for better terms. Numerous upcoming books from the publisher are now listed as "currently unavailable" on Amazon,the New York Times found.
Amazon has come under pressure recently to generate greater profits from its massive revenue stream. One way to do this is to push companies that sell products on its platform to offer a greater share of the money generated from e-books. This puts publishers in a difficult position of relying on Amazon for sales while trying to negotiate revenue sharing.
The blocked titles include preorders for J.K. Rowling's upcoming novel The Silkworm, written under the pen name of Robert Galbraith, which is set to be released on June 24 in the United States.
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In some cases, prices have risen dramatically, with the audio version of the upcoming book from Anne Rivers Siddons, The Girls of August, now costing $62.99 on preorder. The hardcover and e-book are not available.
Authors took to social media to encourage customers to go through Barnes & Noble or independent booksellers.
Amazon had been using various tactics to make Hachette offerings less appealing, removing discounts and allowing for shipping delays. The moves have drawn varied criticism as well as concern over the power that the company wields over publishers.
Amazon has a dominant position in the publishing industry, particularly in e-books. Amazon's Kindle e-books account for almost 20% of the U.S. book publishing industry and 65% of the e-book market.
Amazon's strength has been in scale. Being able to sell that many books has allowed Amazon to lower how much it earns on each sale. This means Amazon can sell a book for less than the competition because it only needs to make a tiny bit of money on each book.
Now that Amazon accounts for so much of the book market, it has the power to push harder in negotiations with publishers that rely on it for sales. Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store, a book detailing Amazon's business, found that the ecommerce giant did not hesitate to use its power during negotiations with book publishers.
The publishers, Stone recently noted at a conference, are seen by Amazon as gazelles, while Amazon considers itself a Cheetah.
Hachette issued a statement that acknowledged its preorder books had been labeled unavailable. "We are doing everything in our power to find a solution to this difficult situation, one that best serves our authors and their work, and that preserves our ability to survive and thrive as a strong and author-centric publishing company," the company wrote in a statement to Mashable.
Amazon did not respond to request for comment.
Editor's note: the original version of this story was published with the headline "Amazon Blocks Book Publisher as Industry Tensions Boil Over." This was changed because Amazon is not blocking all Hachette offerings.
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