The Bookseller is reporting this response to Hachette going to the agency model. According to them, Amazon is still selling Hachette ebooks and is still setting its own prices as of Monday morning. In addition to the above, Tesco and WH Smith have removed Hachette’s ebook editions from sale.
Kieron Smith, managing director of The Book Depository, which is supplied e-books by Gardners, said the company had taken the decision to remove the books from sale and did not plan to sign the agreement.
Smith said: “One of the many reasons is we want to apply consistency of offer to the customer. One of the stipulations is we can’t offer coupons or discount vouchers. If we did an e-book offer we would have to have a massive list of exceptions for Hachette titles. We are not being straight with the customer. Unless I can control a customer’s experience, selling e-books with the price set by the publisher is not something I want to do.”
A big “YAY” for Kieron Smith’s stand on this.
Hopefully bookstores have learned from the US agency model and will not cave in to the publishers this time.
I hope all bookstores will keep up an unitied front against Hachette.
Lets all support the bookstores by not complaining about the missing books.
Absolutely right. This is price fixing and customer exploitation. Retailers MUST be allowed to charge a price that THEY chose. Competition is the bedrock of a successful market and this is a competition killer.
I believe we should be writing to our representatives on this matter wherever we live and telling them that this kind of price fixing should be looked at very closely and if necessary outlawed.
The only thing the agency model has done to me is actually save me money. I now just get the agency books from search google and downloading the pirated version.