Hachette CEO: ‘More Than 80% of the Ebooks We Publish Are Priced at $9.99 or Lower’
It’s been a weekend of manifestoes as Amazon, book publisher Hachette and authors try to draw others onto their respective sides — and encourage readers to email Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Hachette Book Group CEO Michael Pietsch. Now Pietsch is responding to those writing to him, and Hachette made that response public on Sunday night.
A letter in support of Hachette ran as a two-full-page advertisement in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, signed by more than 900 authors. Amazon, meanwhile, sent a letter of its own to KDP authors and posted it online in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
In his letter (posted in full below), Pietsch writes that “we don’t usually comment publicly while negotiating, but I’ve received a lot of requests for Hachette’s response to the issues raised by Amazon, and wanted to reply with a few facts.” He goes on to say that Hachette sets its own ebook prices “far below corresponding print books,” that “more than 80% of the ebooks we publish are priced at $9.99 or lower” and that “those few priced higher” will decrease in price once the paperback edition of a book is published.