Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has reached agreed to a deal with HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. pertaining the commercialization of books in print form as well as e-books.
The publisher and the e-commerce giant came into an agreement after previous disputes regarding the share of profits from the sale of e-books.
Erin Crum, HarperCollins’ spokeswoman, announced that the agreement will facilitate the continuation of the partnership between the two companies. Therefore, the publishing company will keep on availing its books to customers on Amazon’s retail service.
The spokesperson from the Seattle-based company, Craig Berman, has not yet made any official statement regarding the new agreement.
Amazon’s deal with the publisher came after previous contracts were made with other publishing houses such as Simon & Schuster, Macmillan Publishers, and Hachette Book Group. The agreements have however not been an easy sail especially with regards to the pricing of the books. Amazon has been pushing for price discount, with the argument that discounted prices would help in improving sales, thus bringing in more revenue. The sharing ratios have also contributed to disagreements between the companies.
Most of the publishing companies and the authors attributed their lack of satisfaction with the discount deals from Amazon, to the fact that they were losing income. The publishing firms have been going through hard times due to shifting technological patterns. The print form is almost being rendered obsolete, especially by the growing preference for digital media forms.
Amazon has the biggest market share when it comes to the sale of both print and digital books. It boasts of a 60% market share, despite the help it offers other e-book markets such as Pioneer, through the sale of reading devices such as the Kindle tablet.
Despite the dissatisfaction of publishers, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is on to something with its proposed discounts. Print form continues to suffer massively from the digital shift. People are not as interested in purchasing books or taking pride in having shelves full of books. Services for digital media, offered by the likes of Amazon have a good chance of saving publishers from extinction.
