{"id":281154,"date":"2010-02-05T00:10:38","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T05:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"Gizmodo-5464742"},"modified":"2010-02-05T00:10:38","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T05:10:38","slug":"the-9-99-ebook-is-dead-third-major-publisher-hachette-dumps-on-amazon-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/281154","title":{"rendered":"The $9.99 Ebook Is Dead: Third Major Publisher Hachette Dumps on Amazon [Amazon]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"lytebox\" href=\"http:\/\/cache.gawker.com\/assets\/images\/4\/2010\/02\/applepublishers.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/cache.gawker.com\/assets\/images\/4\/2010\/02\/500x_applepublishers.jpg\" class=\"left image500\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a>Amazon&#8217;s ebook pricing structure has crumbled. Hachette&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/agents\/breaking_hachette_book_group_to_transition_to_agency_model_151128.asp\">the third major publisher<\/a> to push for the agency model, <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5460203\/the-apple+amazon-ebook-war-begins-amazon-deletes-macmillan-books\">following MacMillan<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5462724\/another-blow-in-the-great-amazonapple-publishing-war-harpercollins\">HarperCollins<\/a>: They&#8217;ll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut. The $9.99 ebook? Poof.<\/p>\n<p>It looks the pricing model <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5457759\/the-price-of-ebooks-for-the-apple-tablet-1299-or-1499\">reportedly first proposed by Apple<\/a> to publishers&mdash;from $12.99 to $14.99 as a suggested price for harcover bestsellers, though the publisher will set whatever price they want&mdash;is the way things are indeed going to shape up, so Steve Jobs wasn&#8217;t idly riffing <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5459576\/steve-jobs-gets-candid-on-ipad-kindle-and-love-battery-life\">when he said the price difference<\/a> between Kindle and iBooks would go away. MacMillan CEO John Sargent has specifically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/bookselling\/macmillan_ceo_confirms_amazon_price_feud_150536.asp\">mentioned those same pricepoints<\/a> as their baseline, so you can expect every other publisher will hew to that.<\/p>\n<p>With a majority of the major publishers now going to the agency model, it&#8217;s logical that the final two, Penguin and Simon &#038; Schuster, won&#8217;t be far behind, especially since they&#8217;re a part of Steve&#8217;s team. (HarperCollins hasn&#8217;t <em>officially<\/em> switched, but Rupert Murdoch said on their earnings call they&#8217;re renegotiating to that, so I&#8217;m counting it.) Three out of five, we&#8217;re calling it: Amazon&#8217;s dream of a flat $9.99 for ebooks has flatlined.<\/p>\n<p>Amazon&#8217;s price advantage over iBooks, also evaporated. Even though Amazon won&#8217;t take losses on ebooks anymore to sell them cheaply, it&#8217;s a bad situation for them, because they lose that marketshare-building advantage. (That is, Amazon&#8217;s happy to spend $50 subsidizing cheap books to hook you into Kindle for life. If, eventually, they&#8217;re the only game in town, like iTunes was for music, then they&#8217;d have the power to push back against publishers anyway.)<\/p>\n<p>Amazon has two months before the iPad launches. They better move fast. [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediabistro.com\/galleycat\/agents\/breaking_hachette_book_group_to_transition_to_agency_model_151128.asp\">Media Bistro<\/a> via <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamemo.allthingsd.com\/20100204\/hachette-joins-apples-anti-amazon-book-club\/\">MediaMemo<\/a>]<\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"both\" style=\"clear: both;\"\/><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/click.phdo?s=d25be58d3b8e2a7849e73ada87c04555&#038;p=1\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: 0;\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/ads.pheedo.com\/img.phdo?s=d25be58d3b8e2a7849e73ada87c04555&#038;p=1\"\/><\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" height=\"0\" width=\"0\" border=\"0\" style=\"display:none\" src=\"http:\/\/a.rfihub.com\/eus.gif?eui=2226\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.gawker.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?a=-xckzSrsh3k:4ReyQnpr56o:H0mrP-F8Qgo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.gawker.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?a=-xckzSrsh3k:4ReyQnpr56o:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.gawker.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?a=-xckzSrsh3k:4ReyQnpr56o:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?i=-xckzSrsh3k:4ReyQnpr56o:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.gawker.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?a=-xckzSrsh3k:4ReyQnpr56o:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/gizmodo\/full?i=-xckzSrsh3k:4ReyQnpr56o:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/gizmodo\/full\/~4\/-xckzSrsh3k\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazon&#8217;s ebook pricing structure has crumbled. Hachette&#8217;s the third major publisher to push for the agency model, following MacMillan and HarperCollins: They&#8217;ll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut. The $9.99 ebook? Poof. It looks the pricing model reportedly first proposed by Apple to publishers&mdash;from $12.99 to $14.99 as a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}