Amazon Pushes Publisher's Button

According to The New York Times, Amazon has disabled its ‘buy now with 1 click’ icon on its UK site for hundreds of books published by Hachette Livre’s British arm.

Hachette Chief executive, Tim Hely Hutchinson, fired off a letter to many of his authors explaining the sudden disappearance of the purchasing button. In it, he disclosed that Amazon was out for a bigger slice than their already 50 percent take. Apparently Amazon has used this tactic before when rebellious publishers have balked at Amazon’s requests for steeper discounts.

“Amazon seems each year to go from one publisher to another, making increasing demands in order to achieve richer terms at our expense and sometimes at yours,” Mr. Hutchinson said in the letter. “If this continued, it would not be long before Amazon got virtually all of the revenue that is presently shared between author, publisher, retailer, printer and other parties.”

Read the full article here.