Amazon conflict with Hachette will not be over by Christmas
Nicholas Clee writing in The Times:

Publishers have had their Dunkirk, and now Hachette is attempting to launch D-Day. Time and again over the past 15 years, publishers have retreated before the mighty negotiating power of the bookselling chains. In fighting back against Amazon, Hachette is calculating that its substantial, 15 per cent share of the retail book market, as well as the strength of its fellow publishing giants, will at last tilt back the balance of power.

How the book world has changed. When, in the 1980s, a man with a background in grocery told a meeting of publishers: “In the trade I come from, if the retailer says, ‘Jump’, the supplier asks, ‘How high?’,” the audience looked at him as if he were talking gibberish. They all know what he meant now.

Read the full piece at The Times online.