The dispute between Amazon and French book publisher Hachette over e-book pricing could end if Hachette lowers down e-book prices to $9.99 or less, says Amazon in a post on its website.
Defending its stand on the issue, the online retailer said it’s not calling out for a larger share of ebook sales revenue; rather it is satisfied accepting 30 percent of e-book sales. The only thing Amazon is asking the book publisher to do is to lower digital prices on many of its titles to $9.99 from between $12.99 and $14.99.
Citing its own data, the online retailer claimed that lowering e-book prices to $9.99 would result in more revenue than $14.99. Its efforts to push for lower prices will in-fact benefit all related parties, including the customer, author, publisher and, of course, Amazon.
Explaining the reason for lowering e-book prices, Amazon said that the $14.99 and $19.99 prices for e-books is highly unjustifiable as they cost less to produce, there isn’t any problem related to overstock and loss, neither any associated warehousing or transportation cost and even can’t be resold.
The retailer said that the low prices will help ebooks to compete against alternatives, including games, social networking sites and television.
According to Amazon, at $9.99, an e-book sells twice as many as sold at $14.99 resulting in a 16 percent increase in revenue. If customers buy 100,000 copies of an ebook at $14.99, then they would buy 174,000 copies of the same ebook at $9.99, thereby boosting the total revenue up to $1.7 million from the revenue of about $1.5 million if the same book is sold at $14.99, the retailer claims.
However, Hachette is yet to comment on the report.
