Amazon agrees to higher prices for e-books

Amazon.com says it will capitulate and agree to a boost in prices for electronic versions of books by publishing giant Macmillan after the online retailer pulled hundreds of titles off its site over the weekend.

Many popular books had been taken off Amazon.com because of the dispute with Macmillan, but Amazon officials said Monday they will agree to Macmillan's demands.

The Booker winner Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel and The Politician by Andrew Young — an insider's account of the campaign of ex-vice-presidential candidate John Edwards — were just some of the hundreds of novels that were withdrawn over the weekend.

Macmillan and other publishers have complained to the online seller that charging $9.99 US for e-book bestsellers is too low and affects the price of hardcovers.

Macmillan is proposing an e-book price of between $12.99 and $14.99 when a book is first released, with the price later dropping.

Amazon's Kindle e-reader was made available in Canada in September. There are more than 300,000 titles available at prices usually below $12 Cdn.

A massive event

The withdrawal of Macmillan books had been massive since it is one of the world's largest English-language publishers and includes St. Martin's Press, Henry Holt & Co., Farrar, Straus & Giroux and sci-fi arm Tor.

Other publishers, including Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, have announced they will delay the release of digital copies of new books in order to preserve the hardcover price.

Canadian writer Cory Doctorow, published by Tor, said authors and readers suffer from a dispute like this.

Writing on his website, boingboing.net, Doctorow called the controversy a "case of two corporate giants illustrating neatly exactly why market concentration is bad for the arts."