Here is the press release I received:
“Random House, Inc. is adopting the agency model for e-book sales in the United States effective March 1, 2011. Going forward, Random House will set consumer prices for the e-books we publish, and we will provide retailers with a commission for each sale. There are no changes to our terms of sale for physical books.
“The agency model guarantees a higher margin for retailers than did our previous sales terms. We are making this change both as an investment in the successful digital transition of our existing partners and in order to give us the opportunity to forge new retail relationships.
“We are looking forward to continuing to work with all our retail partners – both digital and physical — on our joint mission to connect our authors with as many readers as possible, in whatever format they prefer.”
Always was very pessimistic about publishers letting go of the powers they gained under the agency model. This pretty much clinches it really.
Will be interesting to see if Random House adopts lower pricing for their titles.
Of course now they can negotiate to get on the iBookstore. With the possible departure of all other ebookstores from iOS that is just as well.
Appears that Apple’s tactics are paying off already.
One more reason to keep playing WoW.
I don’t play their game. If I think their book prices are higher than I want to pay, I use my book budget to purchase books from indie authors instead. I can get at least 3 indie books for the typical $9.99 price, more for the over-priced books.
Perhaps more mainstream authors will start to see the value of the indie path. I’ve seen quite a few lately publishing their backlists for $2.99. They get just as much or more per book as with their traditional publisher, a closer relationship with readers, and readers get affordable books.
Disappointing. But I really haven’t missed the other 5 companies, whose ebooks I refuse to buy under agency, so I doubt I’ll miss RH either.
I wonder why?
All indications to this point have been that their e-book division was out-performing the A5’s and just recently I read an interview with one of their executives that said they were “publishers” not “retailers” and should stay with what they did best leaving the selling to bookstores.
I was really hoping the A5 would die on April 1. *sigh* One more reason to hate Apple. They don’t want to develop a really good bookstore, they just want everyone else’s to be as bad as theirs.
I never thought the $9.99 price model was sustainable, but e-books priced close to or over the p-book price, (whether they’re new releases or old paperbacks), is just simple publisher greed. Will all the lemmings follow HP in the 28-and-out library contract now too?