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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

> "Our expired terms with Bloomsbury were far out of sync with other publishers who sell books through our store. Unlike other UK publishers, with whom we’ve successfully negotiated in recent years, Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continued investments in bringing books in all formats to readers."

Anyone know what this marketing-speak translates into?

Right now a book like [1] [2] is £8.99 paperback, £7.99 ebook from the publishers, £2.29 ebook from Kindle.

Bloomsbury seem to already be giving Amazon an enormous discount on the ebook; you'd think Amazon would be happy to renew on such generous terms.

[1] https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mime-order-9781526675989/ [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mime-Order-Bone-Season-Book-ebook/d...

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Amazon has publishers over a barrel - it makes up a large proportion of book sales, but it's so aggressive in negotiations that publishers hardly make any profit at all. They hate Amazon like a shopkeeper hates the local racketeers extracting protection money. I guess Bloomsbury finally snapped, and I wouldn't be surprised if other publishers follow suit now that the dam has broken.

If all the major publishers pull out, Amazon loses negotiating power. But it only works if the publishers act as a block

Be careful what you wish for. The level of collusion that would allow 'all' the major publishers to neuter Amazon would very quickly be redirected to all the other retail channels.

Yes, publishers have not proven to be particularly civic-minded in the past. I'm having a hard time picking who to root for, but it's probably slightly better to have a world of many cartels than a single one - and it gives a chance for the other retail channels to form a block too.

On a side note, France solved this particular problem by mandating a unique price for books, regardless of the retail channel, in order to protect less-commercial titles. Not exactly scalable to all sectors, but Art will not be cheapened.

"Successfully renegotiated" from Amazon's point of view likely means Amazon taking a larger % of revenue from sales

Analogous, having been on the wrong end of the same negotiation with Wallmart, our pre-meeting preparation consisted almost entirely of "how much of a haircut can they impose on us before we just close shop?". I can't imagine it's different at Amazon.

> Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continued investments

They didn’t want to get F-ed any more.

Amazon is very one sided business. They there to enrich themselves at the cost of publisher and reader, consumer and producer.

"Bloomsbury wishes to sell to us at the customary discount if offers to other wholesalers, and which covers their costs and then a bit more. We however, want a larger discount, because we are Amazon. If that leaves nothing for Bloomsbury's overhead, so be it. They can watch their sales fall off drastically and think again about presuming to negotiate with us."

It's more about what % of the price cut goes directly to Amazon in fees rather than the actual cost discount to end users.

Most probably Amazon wanted to push ebook prices further down - or a time-limited deal for Bloomsbury about less ebook fees expired.

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