Amazon and Hachette take ebooks battle into public domain

The extraordinary stand-off between Amazon and Hachette saw battle lines further entrenched on Tuesday as both parties took to the public arena to insult and accuse each other.

While titles from Hachette writers including JK Rowling and James Patterson continue to be given long delivery times by Amazon, a sanction imposed by the retailer as the pair fail to agree on new ebook terms, on Tuesday a letter from Amazon proposed giving Hachette authors "100% of the sales price of every Hachette ebook we sell". The retailer suggested that both Amazon and Hachette forgo "all revenue and profit from the sale of every ebook until an agreement is reached", saying this might "take authors out of the middle of the Hachette-Amazon dispute (actually it would be a big windfall for authors) and would motivate both Hachette and Amazon to work faster to resolve the situation".

The letter was first sent to a select few authors, and then to Hachette itself, reported the New York Times. It was printed in full by the website Gigaom.

Hachette told US press that accepting the offer would be suicidal. "We call baloney," Amazon responded. "Hachette is part of a $10bn global conglomerate. It wouldn't be 'suicide'. They can afford it. What they're really making clear is that they absolutely want their authors caught in the middle of this negotiation because they believe it increases their leverage. All the while, they are stalling and refusing to negotiate, despite the pain caused to their authors. Our offer is sincere. They should take us up on it."

Both sides offered conflicting versions of the negotiations over terms. Amazon wrote in its letter that "we reached out to Hachette for the first time to discuss terms at the beginning of January for our contract which terminated in March. We heard nothing from them for three full months. We extended the contract into April under existing terms. Still nothing. In fact we got no conversation at all from Hachette until we started reducing our on-hand print inventory and reducing the discounts we offer customers off their list prices. Even since then, weeks have gone by while we waited for them to get back to us. After our last proposal to them on 5 June, they waited a week to respond at all, promising a counter-offer the following week. We are still waiting a month later."

Hachette, meanwhile, told the Wall Street Journal: "we made an offer in April that was the largest we ever made to any retailer, and in May made another that was higher still … both offers were rejected".

Both sides' public statements about their commercial negotiations follow an open letter from hundreds of mainstream writers, including Stephen King, Donna Tartt and Philip Pullman, calling on Amazon "in the strongest possible terms to stop harming the livelihood of the authors on whom it has built its business". A counter-petition from a group of major self-published authors asked readers not to boycott Amazon in the wake of the negotiations, saying that "all the complaints about Amazon should be directed at Hachette. It is Hachette who wants to charge you more while paying their authors less."

Douglas Preston, the bestselling author who launched the open letter, told the Guardian earlier this week that the writers were not "against" Amazon as a company.

"To say we're against Amazon is like saying people who protest the war are against America. You can be against the war and still be a patriotic citizen.  I would say to the honourable counter-petitioners that we're all on the same side – that is the side of books and literature and reading – and that we should not be framing this as some kind of culture war between self-published and traditionally-published authors. Are we not in the same (leaky) boat and should we not be bailing together? Most of the world out there does not give a damn about books," said Preston. "What we're asking Amazon is something quite simple: please don't hurt authors in your effort to gain leverage in a commercial negotiation with another large corporation."