Macmillan gets standing ovation from American booksellers
04.02.10 | Philip Jones
US publisher Macmillan received a standing ovation at an America Booksellers Association meeting, according to various tweets from the event, picked up by GalleyCat. According to one tweet, there was an "amazing standing ovation from 500 independent booksellers for Macmillan's stand against Amazon".
Publishers Lunch also captured more talk from the event, which was attended by David Young, chief executive of Hachette USA, and Madeline McIntosh, who recently rejoined Random House from Amazon as president, sales, operations, and digital. Young confirmed what UK publishing executives told The Bookseller this week, that other publishers would be looking to move to the 'agency model' as outlined by Macmillan US in its ongoing discussions with Amazon.com.
Young is reported to have said that Hachette "had been considering the agency model as a board since last summer", and "saw only a bleak future at $9.99". Young said he hoped the agency model would stop the publisher having to delay releases of Kindle editions since it would create partnerships with booksellers: "we set the prices, the margins are understood within that and it seems to be a much more level playing field".
According to the Publishers Lunch report, however, McIntosh was more circumspect about taking control over pricing and revealed that this was one of the reasons Random House had not been party to the iBook Store at launch. She said publishers "have no real experience at setting retail prices".
