The Amazon sentence fell Thursday, January 23 at 5:51 p.m.: From midnight, the e-commerce giant would no longer offer its customers the catalog of Bloomsbury, the editor of the saga Harry Potter of J. K. Rowling or the fantasy queen Sarah J. Maas.
“Despite our best efforts in recent months, Bloomsbury has refused to initiate negotiations in good faith to discuss a new contract allowing them to sell their titles in our platform”explained the American e-commerce giant in a press release, adding that ” Unfortunately “he would no longer directly sell any of Bloomsbury's digital books (in Kindle format, developed by Amazon), nor of his printed books in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia (Excluded United States), the remaining purchase possible via An independent seller passing through his platform.
Remove Amazon's investments
Why should the contract evolve in favor of Amazon? As the firm justifies, “Unlike other British publishers with whom we have successfully negotiated in recent years, Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continuous investments to give readers access to books of all formats”mentioning technical improvements for e-books, or a distribution that adapts to Brexit. And in conclusion of the press release: the sales platform left the door still open for a final negotiation. Because Amazon, without saying it, would have had a lot to lose by depriving itself of JK Rowling or the saga Crescent City Sarah J. Maas.
Negotiations by Ultimatum
In reality, the disagreement will have lasted only a few hours: the two parties reached an end to an agreement in the evening and, at 10:30 p.m., the penalty was lifted, Bloomsbury explained (we quote l’article from the bookseller) having learned the threat of Amazon by surprise, reading his public press release when discussions have been carried out since this summer. Friday morning, its share on the stock market flexed slightly.
-A similar conflict had already opposed In 2014 Amazon and Hachette. More than a thousand authors (Stephen King, Salman Rushdie…) had moved The threat of a boycott on their works, asking in a petition in Amazon to no longer take them hostage in his negotiations. The publisher had finally conceded a drop in its prices.
According to the latest global classification 50 published jointly by Weekly books and professional media Publishers Weekly (UNITED STATES), Bookdao (Chine), Digital Publishing Report (Germany) and The Bookseller (United Kingdom), Bloomsbury is 39e World publishing group with turnover of 304 million euros in 2023.
