News

HarperCollins US e-book prices drop

11.09.12 | Joshua Farrington

American e-tailers including Amazon.com have begun selling HarperCollins e-books at discounted prices, after the publisher struck new agreements in the wake of the settlement over price fixing.

HarperCollins US was one of the three publishers, along with Hachette US and Simon & Schuster US, that settled in the case brought by the US Department of Justice, agreeing to stop dictating the prices at which their e-books are sold by retailers.

As part of the settlement, approved last week, the companies were required to renegotiate contracts with sellers including Amazon.

Erin Crum, a spokesperson for HarperCollins, said in a statement that the publisher, “had reached agreements with our e-retailers that are consistent with the final judgement. Dynamic pricing and experimentation will continue to be a priority for us as we move forward.”

An Amazon spokesperson said: “We are happy to again be lowering prices on a broad assortment of HarperCollins titles”. However, Amazon declined to comment on any other publisher negotiations.

The New York Times reported $9.99 prices on Amazon.com for HC US bestsellers including The Fallen Angel by Daniel Silva. New e-book pricing for HC titles has also been reported at Barnes & Noble, Google e-books and Kobo.

Some publishers are also reported to have conceded e-book discounting in the EU in a bid to stave off a European Commission investigation into the issue. 

Penguin, Macmillan and Apple did not settle in the US case, and will face trial next year.

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By Koray Seckin

Retail margin is too high in e-books. There is no warehouse cost, no shipment cost, no labor cost, no inventory cost so why Amazon gets 40% of the price. Amazon's margin should be lowered to 20% at the maximum. Thus e-books can be sold at lower prices.

Tue, 11/09/2012 - 12:36
By malcy

Completely agree. As a book lover rather than retailer, publishers are stupid if they believe pricing back catalogue ebooks at around £6, so more than a paperback copy, will ever win them business. Have they learnt nothing from the music industry. A fair price for a back catalogue ebook is £2 and this is what a number of authors who have now obviously got their own rights back are selling at. I'm sure their sales are much better. Am happy to pay that price even though have many of their physical books already. The two authors I am currently supporting who have adopted this model are the British author James Follett (never bought his final books as they only came out as over priced hardbacks from Severn House, with no paperback) and the US techno thriller author Larry Bond.

Tue, 11/09/2012 - 13:49
By malcy

Should add my HC specific comment. The back catalogue HC author I would love to buy as ebooks is Alistair MacLean. However HC want £3.99 or £4.99 each for these on Kindle.

This is a stupid price when they sold a 15 book set of his paperbacks for £14.99 via Book People, which I bought, and is still available. This has to be printed, transported etc.

Its shows they could easily be selling his ebooks for £1 each and if so I would buy all 40. Therefore I have bought none. As in my earlier post publishers seem to live by the idea that they would rather sell none than some.

Tue, 11/09/2012 - 13:55
By iucounu

You don't really get to see the economics of these things from your point of view as a consumer, so it's not surprising that you feel these are 'stupid' or 'unjustifiable' prices. Clearly nobody in the publishing business actually thinks they'd rather sell none than some; that might lead you to think there's some other explanation?

Deals like that Book People deal are done on almost non-existent margins. The author royalty will be tiny and based on a relatively tiny amount of revenue for the publisher. You can't take the pricing structure of special sales and book club sales and apply them across the entire trade.

You also seem to think that the big difference between print and ebook is that they have to be 'printed and transported'. That's wrong. Print logistics account for around 10% of the cover price of a paperback, so you might be able to price your ebook a pound or so lower to take account of that; but then you're going to be paying double royalties to the author, and then VAT on top of that. So any saving from not printing the book is more than eaten up by those factors.

Publishers can't compete on price with £1 novels. There's not enough money in that price point to pay for all the things that publishers do - with the main thing being paying an advance to the author (again, not printing. That's a minor expense by comparison.) The £1 niche is going to be colonised by self-publishers who are happy to cut corners or to wear many different hats.

I do agree with you that ebooks ought to be cheaper than the paperback list price, but only a little cheaper.

Thu, 13/09/2012 - 12:38
By Koray Seckin

Retail margin is too high in e-books. There is no warehouse cost, no shipment cost, no labor cost, no inventory cost so why Amazon gets 40% of the price. Amazon's margin should be lowered to 20% at the maximum. Thus e-books can be sold at lower prices.

Tue, 11/09/2012 - 12:36
By malcy

Completely agree. As a book lover rather than retailer, publishers are stupid if they believe pricing back catalogue ebooks at around £6, so more than a paperback copy, will ever win them business. Have they learnt nothing from the music industry. A fair price for a back catalogue ebook is £2 and this is what a number of authors who have now obviously got their own rights back are selling at. I'm sure their sales are much better. Am happy to pay that price even though have many of their physical books already. The two authors I am currently supporting who have adopted this model are the British author James Follett (never bought his final books as they only came out as over priced hardbacks from Severn House, with no paperback) and the US techno thriller author Larry Bond.

Tue, 11/09/2012 - 13:49
By malcy

Should add my HC specific comment. The back catalogue HC author I would love to buy as ebooks is Alistair MacLean. However HC want £3.99 or £4.99 each for these on Kindle.

This is a stupid price when they sold a 15 book set of his paperbacks for £14.99 via Book People, which I bought, and is still available. This has to be printed, transported etc.

Its shows they could easily be selling his ebooks for £1 each and if so I would buy all 40. Therefore I have bought none. As in my earlier post publishers seem to live by the idea that they would rather sell none than some.

Tue, 11/09/2012 - 13:55
By iucounu

You don't really get to see the economics of these things from your point of view as a consumer, so it's not surprising that you feel these are 'stupid' or 'unjustifiable' prices. Clearly nobody in the publishing business actually thinks they'd rather sell none than some; that might lead you to think there's some other explanation?

Deals like that Book People deal are done on almost non-existent margins. The author royalty will be tiny and based on a relatively tiny amount of revenue for the publisher. You can't take the pricing structure of special sales and book club sales and apply them across the entire trade.

You also seem to think that the big difference between print and ebook is that they have to be 'printed and transported'. That's wrong. Print logistics account for around 10% of the cover price of a paperback, so you might be able to price your ebook a pound or so lower to take account of that; but then you're going to be paying double royalties to the author, and then VAT on top of that. So any saving from not printing the book is more than eaten up by those factors.

Publishers can't compete on price with £1 novels. There's not enough money in that price point to pay for all the things that publishers do - with the main thing being paying an advance to the author (again, not printing. That's a minor expense by comparison.) The £1 niche is going to be colonised by self-publishers who are happy to cut corners or to wear many different hats.

I do agree with you that ebooks ought to be cheaper than the paperback list price, but only a little cheaper.

Thu, 13/09/2012 - 12:38

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