DRM News

Amazon’s Kindle has become the dominant player in the burgeoning e-book industry, accounting for more than 60 percent of the market thus far. Part of the reason for that is likely their $10 price point for bestsellers,

Well, as reported on DailyTech, Macmillan Books, a major global publishing company, is not satisfied with that. Says Macmillan CEO John Sargent :

“Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.”

Originally, Amazon pulled Macmillan’s material from their e-book product line, hoping that they would come around. That hasn’t happened. And due to Macmillan’s place in the industry, Amazon will now return the availability of Macmillan offerings to the Kindle platform at the increased price.

This likely means that other large publishing houses will demand a similar price increase on their major book releases, something that would result in a 30-50% increase in the base price of new releases on the Kindle. How this will affect sales of the Kindle is not yet known, nor do we know if this increase will carry to other e-book systems as publishers begin making similar demands of Amazon’s competitors.