Macmillan hard cover books return

NY Times: Macmillan Books Return After Dispute.  Brad Stone and Motoko Rich report on the end of negotations, though it's not clear what was successfully negotiated.  

They write:

' So what did Amazon hold out for?  The company would not comment, but it is likely that Amazon demanded that no other e-book vendors, such as Apple, get preferential access to new titles, or any kind of pricing advantages.
  Amazon may also have negotiated terms into its agreement with the publisher that would allow users of Kindles or Kindle software to lend e-books to each other. '

Emphases mine.  The words 'likely' and 'may' are used to mention concessions, the concepts of which wouldn't have come from thin air.  It seems the NYTimes probably got SOME kind of word but isn't free to say so outright.

Also, while hardcover books are back, the Kindle edition copies have not shown up as of mid-Friday evening.

OTHER NEWS REPORTS - Follow links for full stories
1. Why (And How) Apple Killed The $US9.99 Ebook

' Publishers joining Apple’s iBooks store are turning their back on Amazon and its vision of the flat $US9.99 ebook. Apple forced the music industry to charge 99 US cents per song, so why are they helping publishers set their own prices?

To screw Amazon. '   [From Gizmodo.com]

2. Apple iPad Helps Publishers Get Better Price from Amazon

' Gizmodo reports that the move could mean the end of the $9.99 book.  The conventional wisdom is that publishers will set the ebook prices first proposed by Apple—from $12.99 to $14.99.  I suspect that Penguin and Simon & Schuster will follow suit and that Amazon will be forced to migrate to the agency model and match Apple pricing.'   [From beforeitsnews.com]

3. Epicenter The Business of Tech Panacea or Poison Pill:
    Who Gets to Decide About $10 E-Books?

' Hachette has become the third major publisher to publicly denounce Amazon.com’s $10 e-book model.  It joins Macmillan and HarperCollins in what seems now like the death blow to a price point that had less to do with the inherent value of the content than it did with finding a magic number readers could not resist in droves. '   [From wired.com]

It's Friday night and Len Edgerly's The Kindle Chronicles weekly podcast is up, with the final part of the 2-part interview with Forrester's James McQuivey, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
  The first part is at Len's The Reading Edge podcast, which reports on all e-readers -- this last week's podcasts being especially germane, as mentioned in the last blog entry here. Part 1 of a 2-part interview there is titled "Amazon Brings a Knife to a Mud Fight."
  In Part 2 James McQuivey also shares his thoughts on the Apple’s new iPad's place in all this as well as what the next Kindle may shape up to be. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

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Macmillan books to go back up soon? Apple DRM - Update

I'm fascinated by what I see in a spin around the forums.

Those fearful that Amazon will have a monopoly and then raise e-book prices are thrilled Macmillan is forcing them to raise them now. :-).


NEWS
Apple and Amazon's Stanza
Amazon’s Stanza Bows To Apple’s E-book Sharing Request

Does Apple’s iBooks ambition mean a new DRM regime for existing
e-book app makers? Less than a week after the new iBooks store was
announced alongside the iPad, the Amazon-owned Stanza iPhone e-books
app has released an upgrade, the version notes for which read:

“Removed ability to share books via USB as required by Apple.”

Oddly, the WiFi sync feature remains.

    Macmillan books status
TheBookseller reports that

' As one editor at a London publishing house put it: "Whatever happens in the US will dictate what happens elsewhere in the world." Some publishers sensed Amazon was gearing up for a legal fight with its use of the word "monopoly" in its response, posted on a Kindle forum.

But the suggestion that Amazon.com has been defeated has been rejected by some. Forrester's James McQuivey notes on Paid Content that Amazon "wins in the short run and the long run", given that it will now make money from sales of Macmillan's books on the Kindle, while Macmillan may lose sales, forcing it to bring prices down again.
  "In that future, Amazon will make more money than it does now. At that point, even if prices come back down to $9.99, Amazon will be making $3.30 from each book sold. . . And publishers will make less money than before on each book sold."

Meanwhile, despite Amazon.com's public climbdown, there is still no firm indication when it will begin selling Macmillan US' titles again. As Publishers Lunch reported: " They only said they would do so 'ultimately'. Does that really mean 'in early March' when Macmillan's new terms become effective, or slightly thereafter when the iPad launches, or sometime far sooner?"

On the other hand, Pub Rants writes

' Talking with Macmillan editors, I hear that John Sargent has a meeting this afternoon with Amazon and that the company is “optimistic” that links will be back up by tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ve been assured that the conversation is continuing. '

Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle

(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!