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Hachette clashes with Amazon

23.05.08 Benedicte Page

Amazon has removed from sale key front and backlist titles from across the Hachette Group: the UK's largest publisher and online retailer are believed to be locked in a dispute over terms.

Kate Mosse's Labyrinth (Orion) and James Patterson's The 6th Target (Headline) are among the big-hitting paperbacks only available for sale from Amazon Marketplace this morning (23rd May), with the "Buy New" button removed from their Amazon pages. New hardbacks from Stephen King (Hodder), Chris Manby (Hodder), Lesley Lokko (Orion) and Dan Cruickshank (Weidenfeld) also feature on the retailer's website conspicuously without their "Buy New" buttons.

Amazon conducts yearly negotiations with publishers over the discounts it receives. The Hachette tussle comes in the wake of a similar dispute in January, when a number of Bloomsbury titles were temporarily removed from sale through Amazon's main channel.

One Hachette publisher said they had been contacted by authors concerned about the fact their books were not on sale on Amazon. A sales executive added: "We don't want to restrict the supply of books, and Amazon doesn't want to restrict the choice it offers, but there is a negotiation that needs to take place that will be resolved eventually."

Hachette said: "Our terms to major customers are already very generous and we cannot agree to increase what we already give. This may lead to tension between us and our customers, but we have excellent working relationships with all our customers, including Amazon, and where there are points of contention, these are always resolved on a win/win basis."

Mark Le Fanu of the Society of Authors commented: "If Hachette is holding out against conceding further discount, one has sympathy. At the same time, it's the authors who get caught in the crossfire, and that's never a happy experience."

An Amazon spokesperson said the retailer was "effectively" still selling Labyrinth, The 6th Target and Duma Key: "Some products on site are only sold through third-party sellers because of any number of reasons. We regard it as one offer." He refused to comment on whether Amazon was in dispute with Hachette.

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Comments on this article

By imatree

Good for Hachette. Nice to see a plucky little publisher standing up to the behemoth. And authors should cheer, not complain - the long term position for them is better the higher their net receipts from the retailers. Major publishers cannot continue to fund deep discounting for the internet and Amazon in particular, it cheapens books generally and will continue to impact on bricks'n'mortar retailers, who still make up the biggest proportion of their sales. it would be better for the industry to level off the playing field by supporting independent booksellers with improved discounts.

23 May 08 08:30

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By Clive Keeble

Hopefully, the time has arrived when collectively the publishers will cease to fund Amazon operations to the detriment of the established booktrade.

23 May 08 08:32

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By Clive Keeble

It is only thanks to the 'benefit' of Marketplace third-party seller income that Amazon can currently get so aggressive with publishers. Few of the third-party sellers, often trading literally from the kitchen table, have substantial stock holdings : they are merely conduits between wholesalers and the end-customer, working for a few pence in the pound (with minimal overheads) and giving Amazon listing fee and 15% sales commission.

23 May 08 08:59

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By JUIAN RIVERS

Amazon are in a win win position as pro rata their marketplace sales are more profitable.Therefore as Hachette are hurting Amazon are laughing . In the end Hachette will give way not least because of author pressure .

23 May 08 09:32

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By CM

I agree totaly with Clive and Julian. It will need a concerted effort on the part of every large trade publisher to take a swipe at Amazon's expansionist policies and to reduce the discounts given to them. However, in the UK, our choice is limited - lots of independent bookshops have closed, there are three large chains which dominate the bricks and mortar marketplace (Waterstones, WH Smith and Borders) and supermarkets which only want to sell the really profitable 10% of bestsellers. Amazon has a clear majority of sales across the internet and even its competitors like Book Depositary have to use marketplace to succeed. In the specialist end of publishing there are many more small internet-retailers and they survive just because they offer a decent service on titles that are often published by small one-man-band publishers. It's about the only major part of publishing not dependent on multi-national conglomerates as printer, publisher or retailer.

23 May 08 12:00

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