[LINK] Uncle Rupert weighs in on the Amazon pricing

[Jan Whitaker]

Fwd: Publishers Lunch
>In yesterday's conference call with investors, Rupert Murdoch had this to say:
>
>"We don't like the Amazon model of selling everything at $9.99. They 
>don't pay us that. They pay us the full wholesale price of $14 or 
>whatever we charge, but we I think it really devalues books and it 
>hurts all the retailers of the hard cover books. We're not against 
>electronic books, on the contrary we like them very much indeed it's 
>low cost to us, and so on but we want to some room to maneuver in it 
>and Apple in its agreement with us, which is not been disclosed in 
>detail, does allow for a variety of slight of higher prices. 
>There'll be prices very much less than the printed copy of books. 
>But still it will not be fixed in the way that Amazon has been doing 
>it. And it appears that Amazon is now ready to sit down with us 
>again and re-negotiate pricing."
><http://click.publisherslunchdaily.com/cp/redirect.php?u=NTAwNnwzNDQ4OXxqd2hpdEBqYW53aGl0YWtlci5jb218Mzk2NjI4fDc2MDIyMjM2fDU5MzYzOQ==&id=3282308>Transcript 
>
>


>Macmillan Launches A New eBook Price Point Now--At Amazon As Well As BN.com
>Buy buttons for Macmillan's physical books have yet to return at 
>Amazon (at least in any meaningful way), but the publisher quietly 
>launched what may soon be just a remnant of their earlier strategy 
>to keep up the price of ebooks: the "enhanced" edition.
>
>Kristin Hannah's WINTER GARDEN, which released yesterday, was one of 
>the few (if only) Macmillan books you could buy directly from 
>Amazon, which was offering the Kindle version only and not the trade 
>hardcover. But the book carries the curious digital list price of 
>$29.99--three dollars higher than the print book list price.
>
>The Amazon information page offered no obvious explanation for the 
>new pricing. But at Barnes & Noble.com, they helpfully (and 
>prominently) explained that the ebook version of Winter Garden is a 
>"Special Edition eBook" with "a number of exciting features, 
>including: An exclusive conversation with the author; a special 
>essay written by the author describing her research process for the 
>book; delicious recipes for making Russian food favorites in your 
>kitchen at home; and more."
>
>BN is selling the ebook for $14.99, while Kobo has it for $17.99 
>(and also marks it as a special edition.) Amazon's Kindle price was 
>$16.99--but by this morning, that Kindle edition was removed again.
>
>After we first posted yesterday afternoon, Amazon customers started 
>a 
><http://click.publisherslunchdaily.com/cp/redirect.php?u=NTAwNnwzNDQ4OXxqd2hpdEBqYW53aGl0YWtlci5jb218Mzk2NjI4fDc2MDIyMjM2fDU5MzYzOQ==&id=3282309>forum 
>about this book's price, coming to all kinds of incorrect 
>conclusions about this as the first example of what will "really" 
>happen to ebook prices now. As we've said before, publishing people 
>are well advised to both monitor and when appropriate participate in 
>this customer discussions.
>
>NB: We believe that an afternoon NYT blog post saying select buy 
>buttons had returned and citing the "some print editions of works by 
>Emily Giffin" as "available direct from Amazon" were based on the 
>paper's misunderstanding. They were citing works from Amazon's 
>bargain store, which likely sells hurts and remainders that don't 
>benefit Macmillan; those buy buttons were never removed in the first 
>place (we had checked this over the weekend).
><http://click.publisherslunchdaily.com/cp/redirect.php?u=NTAwNnwzNDQ4OXxqd2hpdEBqYW53aGl0YWtlci5jb218Mzk2NjI4fDc2MDIyMjM2fDU5MzYzOQ==&id=3282310>BN 
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Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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