HarperCollins Reaches New Agreements With Amazon and Others on E-Book Prices

[Top100EbooksRank]

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...e-book-prices/

HarperCollins has struck new agreements with Amazon and other retailers that allow its e-books to be sold at a discount, the publisher said on Monday.

The agreements appear to make HarperCollins the first of the three publishers to renegotiate its contracts with retailers, as required by the terms of a settlement the publishers reached with the Department of Justice in April. That settlement was approved last week by a federal judge in Manhattan.


Sarah Gelman, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said in an e-mail, “We are happy to again be lowering prices on a broad assortment of HarperCollins titles.” She declined to comment on any other publisher negotiations.

The agreements call for HarperCollins to set the list price of the book but to allow the retailer to discount the titles. The new prices could give HarperCollins a competitive advantage — at least temporarily — if its books are priced lower than those of other major publishers.

The elephant in the room is Random House. They are on agency and not part of the DOJ lawsuit. Will they stay with agency pricing (and lower profits due to agency pricing) or will they switch back to wholesale?

[Kumabjorn]

You can already get the latest Daniel Silva novel for an easy to remember $9.99 at Amazon.

[Top100EbooksRank]

In the comment section, Mike Shatzkin (well known publishing consultant) wrote this:

http://www.idealog.com/blog/hats-off-to-amazon/

1. According to my understanding, Amazon *always* "made money" (as in "made margin") on the content. I was told by am Amazon executive before agency that 4% of the titles were discounted below cost and they constituted 25% of the sales. The margin made on the other 75% of the sales more than compensated for the "losses". That's what they said and I don't disbelieve them.

3. There is already a stipulated (but impossible to enforce) "cap" on the margin a retailer can give away; they're not allowed (theoretically) to lose money on the whole body of ebooks they sell from any particular publisher over the course of a year.

[crossi]

Even without discounting below cost the previous 30% margin they were required to have gives quite a bit of leeway for discounting. I'd be quite happy if they never dropped their margin to less than 20% for any book. That's still cheaper by 10%.

[rdjack21]

I'll just be happy to have a discount program that does not exclude EBooks. I mean every coupon I've gotten since Agency pricing went into affect had a stipulation that it could not be used for EBooks which is crazy. I have always thought it was crazy that a retailer could not give out coupons for use in there store or even Gasp run a sale to drive traffic. So I'm happy about this.

[Top100EbooksRank]

http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/11/th...ooks-cost-now/
Sep 11, 2012 - 9:54AM
The price drops begin: What do HarperCollins ebooks cost now?

A roundup of select titles (the prices are correct as of Tuesday morning, but are subject to change):

-------link to see the 12 books listed----------

Not surprisingly, Amazon is offering the lowest prices. Based just on the titles above, the average price on Amazon Kindle was $8.94; on Barnes & Noble Nook, $9.57; on Google Play, $9.91; on Sony (SNE), $10.42; on Kobo, $12.25.

[elemenoP]

They need to add Apple iBooks to their price chart. iBooks has the best price on some of the HC books right now.

eP

[Suzanna]

I can't speak for HarperCollins in the US, but they haven't renegotiated their contracts yet with Kobo Canada. I just tried to apply a coupon code to an HC book five minutes ago and received the "due to publisher restrictions" message.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by rdjack21

I'll just be happy to have a discount program that does not exclude EBooks. I mean every coupon I've gotten since Agency pricing went into affect had a stipulation that it could not be used for EBooks which is crazy. I have always thought it was crazy that a retailer could not give out coupons for use in there store or even Gasp run a sale to drive traffic. So I'm happy about this.

I'm with you. I actually think that the publisher-set prices were quite reasonable and I was willing to pay those prices. But it bothered me that there could never be a sale, that every retailer had the same price, and that I could never use a coupon.

When there are discounts or coupons, I'm inclined to stock up on books for future reading; when the price is the same, I have no incentive to buy until I'm actually ready to read the book. I bought a lot of Random House books with Kobo coupons before RH went Agency, not one since the move to Agency.

[Isles8008]

Originally Posted by rdjack21

I'll just be happy to have a discount program that does not exclude EBooks. I mean every coupon I've gotten since Agency pricing went into affect had a stipulation that it could not be used for EBooks which is crazy. I have always thought it was crazy that a retailer could not give out coupons for use in there store or even Gasp run a sale to drive traffic. So I'm happy about this.

Amen to that. Nothing is more frustrating then going to type in a Kobo discount code, only to have that "Promo Codes cannot be used for this item" message pop up. The publishers' attempt to drive away eBook customers will hopefully continue to fail.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Top100EbooksRank

http://paidcontent.org/2012/09/11/th...ooks-cost-now/
Sep 11, 2012 - 9:54AM
The price drops begin: What do HarperCollins ebooks cost now?

They left out BooksOnBoard. BooksOnBoard has lower prices on 7 of the list and 5 are higher.

Kobo is still saying that we cannot use discount codes with HC eBooks. They need to fix that and fast.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

They need to add Apple iBooks to their price chart. iBooks has the best price on some of the HC books right now.

eP

Better then BooksOnBoard?

[abookreader]

I'm going to have to start remembering the names of all those websites that will compare prices for me again.

I'm also really curious as to what Random House will do next. Additionally, I wonder if those "Agency Prices" for Penguin, Macmillan etc will continue creeping toward that $14.99 average with a block of other bestselling books consistently being listed at below $10 on the bookstore sites? I suspect they are really going to start looking even more overpriced.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by abookreader

I'm going to have to start remembering the names of all those websites that will compare prices for me again.

The eBook search engines are not working well. They don't find all the results they should and they often get the prices wrong for the results you do get. It's sad that they people behind those sites no longer care to keep them updated.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Better then BooksOnBoard?

There are four on the list that are cheaper at BoB. Most striking is Bloodline by James Rollins, $4.55 vs. $9.99 at Amazon. It pays to shop around.