Dear Michael Pietsch,
Amazon just notified me of your "illegal collusion" to discourage millions of poor people from reading?
How will you discourage millions of people from reading?

When you overprice ebooks out of the reach of the poor majority who cannot even afford to pay $10 for paperbacks, then how can they afford $14.99 or $19.99 for a copy of ebook?

Overpricing books, movies and tapes is what caused piracy of intellectual property and made pirates to become millionaires from their ill-gotten riches.

In Africa, only the middle class and upper class are buying and reading books, because the poor masses cannot afford them and would rather go for the pirated copies on the streets. And also most of the millions of unsold copies of printed books end up abandoned in warehouses and millions of dollars have been lost over the years. But Print on Demand (PoD) and ebooks have saved publishers from the loss of millions of dollars in unsold books.

What matters most to authors is for readers to read their books and for every copy of unsold books there is a reader that could not afford it. And the publishing industry has been at the receiving end of the downturn in sales of books in print. And ebooks have saved many publishers from bankruptcy and the best we can do is to make ebooks more accessible and available and the only way we can do so is to make ebooks more affordable to the majority of readers. The cheaper the ebooks the better for publishers, authors and readers, because more ebooks will be sold.

Affordability increases profitability
Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.
Lowering e-book prices will help – not hurt – the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.
Michael, let us do the right thing, so that readers will not see us as greedy people.
Your cooperation and support for our united cause to make ebooks the most affordable copies of publications would be highly appreciated.

Faithfully,
Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
https://plus.google.com/+MichaelChimaEkenyerengozi
Author of Scarlet Tears of London, Diary of the Memory Keeper, Bye, Bye Zimbabwe, The Prophet Lied, Nollywood Mirror Series, and other books in paperback, hardcover and ebook versions.

Wow!

Wowwwww

Michael Pietsch's reply.


Thank you for writing to me in response to Amazon’s email. I appreciate that you care enough about books to take the time to write. We usually don’t comment publicly while negotiating, but I’ve received a lot of requests for Hachette’s response to the issues raised by Amazon, and want to reply with a few facts.
· Hachette sets prices for our books entirely on our own, not in collusion with anyone.
· We set our ebook prices far below corresponding print book prices, reflecting savings in manufacturing and shipping.
· More than 80% of the ebooks we publish are priced at $9.99 or lower.
· Those few priced higher—most at $11.99 and $12.99—are less than half the price of their print versions.
· Those higher priced ebooks will have lower prices soon, when the paperback version is published.
· The invention of mass-market paperbacks was great for all because it was not intended to replace hardbacks but to create a new format available later, at a lower price.
As a publisher, we work to bring a variety of great books to readers, in a variety of formats and prices. We know by experience that there is not one appropriate price for all ebooks, and that all ebooks do not belong in the same $9.99 box. Unlike retailers, publishers invest heavily in individual books, often for years, before we see any revenue. We invest in advances against royalties, editing, design, production, marketing, warehousing, shipping, piracy protection, and more. We recoup these costs from sales of all the versions of the book that we publish—hardcover, paperback, large print, audio, and ebook. While ebooks do not have the $2-$3 costs of manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping that print books have, their selling price carries a share of all our investments in the book.

This dispute started because Amazon is seeking a lot more profit and even more market share, at the expense of authors, bricks and mortar bookstores, and ourselves. Both Hachette and Amazon are big businesses and neither should claim a monopoly on enlightenment, but we do believe in a book industry where talent is respected and choice continues to be offered to the reading public.

Once again, we call on Amazon to withdraw the sanctions against Hachette’s authors that they have unilaterally imposed, and restore their books to normal levels of availability. We are negotiating in good faith. These punitive actions are not necessary, nor what we would expect from a trusted business partner.

Thank you again and best wishes,
Michael Pietsch

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Michael Pietsch | Chief Executive Officer
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue New York NY 10017 | 212.364.1479