Amazon and Hachette, the fourth largest book publisher in the US, announced Thursday that they had come to a private agreement, ending their months-long dispute over e-book prices.
The terms of the deal are not known, but The New York Times reports that Hachette will be able to set prices on its books, following a similar deal between Amazon and Simon & Schuster. In a news alert that Amazon sent to Ars via e-mail, the company said the agreement "will take effect early in 2015. Hachette will have responsibility for setting consumer prices of its e-books and will also benefit from better terms when it delivers lower prices for readers.""Amazon and Hachette will immediately resume normal trading, and Hachette books will be prominently featured in promotions," Amazon specified.
Back in May, negotiations over pricing reportedly failed between the two companies. Amazon allegedly wanted higher profit margins on Hachette’s books and wanted to sell the publisher’s e-books at a lower price point. Hachette, on the other hand, said it would fight to be able to set its own prices for its e-books. When neither side could agree, Amazon began removing Hachette titles, including JK Rowling’s The Silkworm and the paperback edition of The Everything Store, a nonfiction book about Amazon’s business practices.
The disagreement became more and more public over the following months, with Amazon sending out a memo saying that it was “not optimistic that [the dispute] will be resolved soon” and encouraging customers to purchase Hachette books from a third-party Amazon seller or, incredibly, from one of Amazon’s competitors. The dispute then earned Amazon ridicule on The Colbert Report, but the company dug its heels in, again flexing its power against Warner Home Video and later publishing a letter arguing that authors get paid better when e-books are cheaper because cheaper works sell more volume. In August and September, author groups fought back, taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times and encouraging members to contact Amazon’s board members to express their displeasure. Both Amazon and Hachette continued to escalate the battle with public statements arguing against each company's opponent.
Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch today said that this morning's agreement “gives Hachette enormous marketing capability with one of our most important book selling partners.”
Amazon’s vice president of its Kindle division, David Naggar, also said that the new agreement "includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we believe will be a great win for readers and authors alike.”
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