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UK publishers have dismissed claims made by Hachette Livre chief executive Arnaud Nourry that they are “very hostile” towards Amazon’s policy of pricing frontlist e-books at $9.99 (£6.15).
Earlier this week, Nourry was quoted by the Financial Times as saying unilateral pricing by Amazon, and other retailers such as Barnes & Noble could destroy profits and kill off hardback editions, predicting that eventually the losses would be passed onto publishers. Hachette UK declined to comment, but other publishers disagreed with Nourry’s stance.
Bloomsbury executive director Richard Charkin said: “I don’t think it’s for us to be hostile to someone else’s strategy—it’s a free market. Of course he has a point, but in the Anglo-Saxon world, as opposed to the French, these things tend to work themselves out in the marketplace.”
He acknowledged retailers “can’t go on losing money” but stressed the writing was not yet on the wall. “Who knows what they will do? It depends how competitive the market becomes. We hope there will be many routes, and one of them will almost certainly be Amazon.”
Canongate digital editor Dan Franklin argued that “with e-books, publishers are calling the shots—through metadata, we price it one way and that’s the way it’s sold”. However he acknowledged this would change “as bigger retailers come on board”.
Franklin added current pricing structures were “not ideal”, as readers “just don’t see how it’s justifiable for publishers to charge as much for hardback as for e-books”.
He said publishers should be “more dynamic”, creating different editions so that e-books and hardbacks do not compete directly. In particular, Franklin suggested cutting content from selected non-fiction e-books “so you can justify having it at a lower price” or creating “deluxe” print versions.
Oxford University Press vice-president of global business development Evan Schnittman agreed it was likely that Amazon’s losses would eventually be passed over to publishers, but said there was a solution. He said: “We need demand-based pricing so that e-books start at one price and then settle into a backlist price when peak demand has ebbed.”
Schnittman added: “If retailers want bestsellers to be priced at $9.99, then they need to create some sort of ‘e-book co-op’ programme that effectively swaps in-store marketing for added discount.”