Tuesday, May 26, 2015

PRH UK and Amazon facing terms dispute

Published May 25, 2015. By Philip Jones - The Bookseller

Penguin Random House UK and Amazon are in dispute over terms, with a new contract under negotiation.

If a deal is not reached Amazon could begin to pull or downgrade the availability of PRH titles from its ecommerce channels as it did with Hachette Book Group USA titles last year. With a number of PRH titles in Amazon's current bestseller chart, there is no indication as yet that Amazon is ratcheting up the pressure on PRH UK.

While neither side has confirmed the terms under dispute, PRH said that it had "no intention whatsoever of ceasing to sell [its] print or digital titles on Amazon"; Amazon spokesman Tarek El-Hawary, in an emailed response to Recode, stated: “I can say that we have long-term deals in place already with the other four major publishers and we would accept any similar deal with Penguin Random House U.K.”

The terms negotiations relate to the revised agency deals put in place after a European Commission investigation four years ago: these deals with a number of big UK publishers are due to run out this year. The negotiations are thought to be with the UK end of the PRH business and do not include the American arm whose revised agency deal with Amazon in the States does not run out till later this year.
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