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<\/a>Here’s another publisher publicly throwing its weight behind Apple — and against Amazon — in the e-book pricing war. Hachette Book Group<\/a> says it will pursue the “agency model” for pricing its e-books: They set the retail price, and the retailer gets a 30 percent cut.<\/p>\nTranslated into more practical terms, it means that Hachette will demand that Amazon and other retailers — but really, this is aimed at Amazon — raise the prices on their e-books from the $9.99 standard they’ve adopted. Instead, it will want them to use the $12.99-$14.99 standard for new books that Apple introduced last week along with its iPad.<\/p>\n
Hachette is one of five publishers that participated in Apple’s (AAPL) iPad launch event<\/a> last week. Macmillan, one of the other five, has spent the past week engaged in a public battle<\/a> with Amazon over the pricing model. On Sunday Amazon (AMZN) said it would capitulate<\/a> to Macmillan’s demands.<\/p>\n Macmillan and Amazon have yet to actually resolve their dispute, though, and as of Thursday night Amazon was still not selling Macmillan’s books on its electronic shelves.<\/p>\n In Thursday’s New York Times, Macmillan advertised one of its titles by noting that is was available “at booksellers everywhere except Amazon”<\/a>. Macmillan CEO John Sargent also defended his position<\/a>, again, in an open letter to his book agents.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, look for the other three publishers who’ve allied themselves with Apple — Pearson\u2019s Penguin Group<\/a>, News Corp.\u2019s (NWS) HarperCollins<\/a> and CBS\u2019s (CBS) Simon & Schuster<\/a> — to fall in line. On Tuesday, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch<\/a> said he expected to renegotiate his publisher’s deal with Amazon soon.<\/p>\n Again, it’s important to remember that by embracing the agency model, the publishers will actually make less per book<\/em> than they do with the current version, where they sell the books at a wholesale price. But the publishers think that’s their only chance to keep the prices of e-books from plummeting, and undercutting the sales of their ink-and-paper books.<\/p>\n The publishers hope this strategy will help them escape the fate of the music labels<\/a>, which saw their $15 CDs replaced with $1 singles. To hear a (mostly) persuasive argument about why they’re wrong, check out this blog post from David Pakman<\/a>, a digital music veteran now working as a venture capitalist with Venrock.<\/p>\n Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n