PublishersLunch
With Tuesday's release of Oliver Pötzsch's
THE DARK MONK: A Hangman's Daughter Tale in the US, the follow-up his to
successful THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER, at least two titles whose US publishing
rights are controlled by Amazon are now being carried widely by major
ebookstores. The ebook editions for sale are published by Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, which had previously licensed only print rights to the Potzsch books
from Amazon Crossing (along with print rights to other titles from Crossing and
Amazon Encore). Up until now, Amazon has sold ebook versions of titles from
their growing family of publishing imprints exclusively through the Kindle
store.
Houghton's ebook editions have a digital
list price of $9.99 (and their trade paperback of the THE DARK MONK lists for
$18.00). Both ebooks are listed for sale at Nook, the iBookstore, and Kobo,
among other outlets (but Google Play still says no ebooks are available, and
the ebooks are not listed in the Sony eBookstore either). At the same time,
Amazon.com is selling Kindle editions of both titles, with Amazon Crossing
listed as the publisher of those editions. The current Kindle price for DARK
MONK is $8.99, with HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER selling for $3.99.
The HMH ebook releases raise the likelihood
that the publisher has licensed from Amazon a broader basket of ebook rights
for sale outside of the Kindle store--for the titles HMH has elected to reprint
in trade paperback and/or for the new line that debuts in September under
the New Harvest imprint, which will issue print versions of books from the
start-up Amazon Publishing New York operation.
As we have reported previously, Amazon has
said informally all along that they intended to make ebook editions of the
Amazon NY titles available to all sellers, without specifying details of how
that would work. (In their print deal, New Harvest is also the publisher of the
print editions sold through Amazon.com itself.) The two-fold question has been,
how will Amazon offer those editions and will other eretailers carry those
ebooks if they are not exclusive to Amazon.
Earlier this year, major retailers
including Barnes & Noble said they would not "stock Amazon published
titles in our store showrooms," while indicating they would likely make
those print titles available for ordering via BN.com. The presence of the two
new Houghton-published Potzsch ebooks in all major ebook outlets may be an
early indicator that New Harvest ebook editions could be carried broadly by
ebookstores outside of Amazon, even if some physical bookstores decline to
stock the print versions.
HMH
said they were unable to comment at this time. Queries to the Amazon and the
other major ebookstores have not elicited any information yet.
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