Amazon Will Allow Higher E-Book Prices, as iPad Competition Heats Up

Amazon.com finds itself embroiled in a dispute with publisher Macmillan, which wants to raise prices of e-books for Amazon's Kindle e-reader to between $12.99 and $14.99. Macmillan cites the presence of competing mobile devices on the market as a reason for its decision. Apple's iPad tablet PC and iBooks store have changed the competitive landscape for electronic texts and will likely force competitors such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble to adjust by altering their prices and the features of their e-reader devices.

The Apple iPad may be two months away from its retail debut, but some of its effects are already being felt on the e-reader industry: Amazon.com found itself in a weekend dispute with Macmillan, publisher of bestsellers such as Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall." Macmillan wanted to raise the price of e-books to take into account new devices hitting the market.

"Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores," Macmillan CEO John Sargent wrote in a Jan. 31 statement on the company Website. "It also needs to ensure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated."

The publishing house wanted to raise prices for most of its titles to between $12.99 and $14.99, whereas Amazon.com's price for e-books has generally been $9.99. Amazon.com balked at the move, pulling Macmillan titles from its e-book online store.

"Macmillan, one of the 'big six' publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases," Amazon.com wrote in a Jan. 31 statement. "We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles."

The statement went on to assure readers that, despite the suspension, Amazon.com would eventually resume sales of Macmillan e-books.

"We will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books," Amazon.com said. "Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book."

Amazon's Kindle team is holding out hope that independent presses and self-published authors will continue to price their e-books lower, helping exert enough competitive pressure to keep market prices low. On top of that, they wrote, "We don't believe that all the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan."

Customers on the Kindle discussion forum seemed to be of many minds about the dispute, with some seeing the price increase as a natural occurrence due to increased competition in the e-reader space. One Kindle owner wrote:

"I believe $14.99 is reasonable. It's a heckuva lot less than what I paid for new hardcovers. (And I get to read them on Kindle!) People who waited for paperbacks can wait for the cheaper eBook edition."

Others, of course, were irritated about the price increase.

"If they want higher prices then it is time for them to provide quality formatting. Not just quickly scanned with no effort to fix the OCR errors. The frequent formatting errors would no longer be acceptable."