Yesterday Amazon and a few major publishers struggled to adjust to a new agency model before the arrival of Apple’s iPad and the iBooks store. Here’s our end-of-the week recap.
As of this 2:10 PM EST writing, Kindle editions of Hachette books appear to be unavailable. You can check availability of Hachette eBooks on Amazon by clicking on this link to Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer. Yesterday Amazon wrote a note to readers and Hachette wrote a note to authors and agents about the problem.
In addition, Penguin has not struck an eBook agreement with Amazon, but the buy buttons for Kindle editions of Penguin books appear to be functional. A note to agents and authors explained: “Your newly released eBook is currently not available on Amazon, but all of your eBooks released prior to April 1st are still for sale on their site.” You can monitor Penguin buy buttons by following this link to the Kindle Edition of Angelology by Danielle Trussoni.
At the same time, Amazon customers have responded passionately in the Amazon forums. A reader named Panama has launched a thread to “boycott agency books”. They wrote: “Now is the time to vote with dollars. Just say no to agency books.” As of this writing, the post had collected 53 responses.
Finally, both Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins have struck eBook agreements with Amazon.
