Yesterday, the Independent Publishers Group (IPG) announced that Amazon has removed all their Kindle editions from the site, totaling around 5,000 books.
According to Publishers Lunch, IPG's president, Mark Suchomel, sent out an email alert yesterday stating, "I am disappointed to report that Amazon.com has failed to renew its agreement with IPG to sell Kindle titles."
Independent Publishers Group was founded in 1971 and is the second biggest independent book distributor, representing around 400 publishers. According to their site, they were the first organization expressly created to represent titles from independent publishers. IPG first made its titles available as e-books in 2001.
Amazon turned off the buying button on the approximately 5,000 Kindle IPG titles because they refused to accept a revised set of terms regarding revenue from Amazon.
In an interview with paidcontent.org, Suchomel said, “We’re offering [the e-book sales terms] we offered last week, and somehow they think it’s not quite good enough."
Suchomel says that their print editions remain available on Amazon, and that their e-book editions are still available from other retailers, such as Barnes & Noble's Nook. Suchomel noted that IPG's current terms are still acceptable to their other e-book retailers, so he remains unworried. He told paidcontent.org, “If half the accounts weren’t buying from us, I’d have to question it, but everyone else is.”
This isn't the first time Amazon has pulled a publisher's titles over a contract dispute. In late January 2010, it pulled all Macmillan e-books in a pricing dispute. Amazon returned the titles after a week, giving in to Macmillan's demands to raise its e-book prices.
Despite the disagreement, Suchomel seems hopeful about future business with online retailer. He also wrote in his email, "Remember that Amazon continues to be an important account that sells a lot of units. This is a business decision on Amazon's part, and hopefully they will soon decide to reverse it and buy at our standard terms."