It was reported back in May that Amazon and publisher Hachette were involved in a tussle that had resulted in books published by Hachette being pulled from Amazon. The tussle was over ebook pricing that both parties were fighting over and this evolved into a very public battle that has gone on for months. It ends today. Amazon and Hachette have finally buried the hatchet and have signed a multiyear agreement for ebooks.
While the announcement has been confirmed by both Amazon and Hachette they aren’t revealing the specific terms of this new agreement. However the latter claims that it will have full control over ebook pricing, and it told the same to Hachette authors through an email sent by CEO Michael Pietsch. This pricing agreement is known as the “Agency model” and according to Pietsch, “protects the value of our authors’ content.”
It will take until early 2015 for this new agreement to go into effect, but the publisher is saying that Amazon will begin restoring normal supply levels of its books once again and customers will be able to pre-order them.
This dispute started when Amazon pushed to get a bigger piece of revenues generated by sales while not allowing Hachette to raise prices over $9.99 for books.
Simon & Schuster had a similar agreement with Amazon recently after a period of negotiations which ensured that the leading bookseller’s published books were continued to be sold by one of the world’s largest online retailer.