Amazon UK to stop selling Bloomsbury's books
34 comments
·January 24, 2025michaelt
lores
Amazon has publishers over a barrel - it makes up a large proportion of book sales, but it's so aggressive in negotiations that publishers hardly make any profit at all. They hate Amazon like a shopkeeper hates the local racketeers extracting protection money. I guess Bloomsbury finally snapped, and I wouldn't be surprised if other publishers follow suit now that the dam has broken.
netdevphoenix
If all the major publishers pull out, Amazon loses negotiating power. But it only works if the publishers act as a block
openplatypus
> Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continued investments
They didn’t want to get F-ed any more.
Amazon is very one sided business. They there to enrich themselves at the cost of publisher and reader, consumer and producer.
fiveslashtwo
"Successfully renegotiated" from Amazon's point of view likely means Amazon taking a larger % of revenue from sales
jacobpretorius
It's more about what % of the price cut goes directly to Amazon in fees rather than the actual cost discount to end users.
cafard
"Bloomsbury wishes to sell to us at the customary discount if offers to other wholesalers, and which covers their costs and then a bit more. We however, want a larger discount, because we are Amazon. If that leaves nothing for Bloomsbury's overhead, so be it. They can watch their sales fall off drastically and think again about presuming to negotiate with us."
tpetry
Most probably Amazon wanted to push ebook prices further down - or a time-limited deal for Bloomsbury about less ebook fees expired.
internet_points
Bloomsbury is one of the few "big publishers" that let you legally buy English-language DRM-free e-books, I whole-heartedly recommend buying from them instead of contributing to lord bezo's dystopian future.
There's another list at https://libreture.com/bookshops/ but it's a bit of a bother to look into all of them; if there's an English-language fiction book I want I tend to just check Bloomsbury (or a quick web search) and if it's not there I give up on finding a legal e-book. There's a niche here for a search engine for bookshops offering DRM-free e-books (ping marginalia_nu ). It's not that hard to set up a shop offering a DRM-free e-book, but it is hard marketing it and making it easy for people to find that book.
marsavar
As someone who worked for the world's largest trade book publisher a decade ago, let me tell you that dealing with Amazon is the worst. They squeeze publishers' profit margins to the absolute minimum, and they aggressively force them to accept terrible deals because they have the upper hand.
Amazon has been horrible for the book industry. Please buy your books elsewhere!
sambeau
Can I take this opportunity to recommend the lovely http://bookshop.org and http://uk.bookshop.org
calimoro78
Book industry or just the publishers? Show me a single author who loves publishers
KwanEsq
Don't worry, Amazon screws authors directly too when they self-publish, by using the cudgel of Kindle Unlimited to choke possible competition in ebook sales.
https://bsky.app/profile/glynnstewart.com/post/3leu7lzvy622g
dageshi
KU is amazing.
There's entire genres like litrpg, progression fantasy and cozy fantasy that likely would either not exist or be a fraction of their current size without it.
And authors can make a living, there's plenty in those genres (not to mention romance) who via a combination of patreon + KU + Audible are doing just fine.
I too wish there was someone who could compete with amazon, but the thing is nobody seems to actually even try? I feel like the entire book industry would be quite happy if things had remained stuck in time circa 1990, on their own they would never have invented something like KU.
frereubu
It does rather feel like the shoe is on the other foot now. Go back a few decades and publishers were the ones rinsing bookshops for all they were worth. Two wrongs don't make a right of course...
andybak
This could be summarised as "companies leverage their power" which is unsurprising.
If you were to list occasions where entities acted intentionally against their best interests then that would be more noteworthy!
globular-toast
The real lesson is if you let a person or organisation get into a position where they can squeeze, they will squeeze. They won't even be doing it because they are "evil" because the hedonic treadmill makes everyone feel entitled to more. The problem is systemic. We know our failures but don't do anything about it.
like_any_other
Amazon has been more than just generically horrible - they use blatantly anti-competitive contracts (as if their near-monopsony position wasn't bad enough):
"Amazon fixed online retail prices through contract provisions and policies" that "prevent third-party sellers that offer products on Amazon.com from offering their products at lower prices or on better terms on any other online platform, including their own websites,"
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/amazon-sued-over...
belter
Frugal is the business term :-)
yourmatenate
Looks like they already resolved it - https://www.thebookseller.com/news/bloomsbury-reaches-new-lo...
fmajid
If Bloomsbury caved to Amazon, that is not a good outcome. Just one of the many reasons why I refuse to buy books on Amazon.
mathw
I'm very interested in what Bloomsbury might have to say about this, because the quotes from Amazon sound like "they refused to accept our dictates on wholesale prices".
robinsonb5
I have a running joke with some friends that they don't say "Amazon" out loud in my presence.
A few months back they started to understand why, when they attempted to navigate the dark-pattern event horizon that is the Amazon Music cancellation process.
(I don't hold out much hope for them developing more ethical shopping habits, though - they've since started buying from Temu!)
christkv
At this point I would consider that to be like 80% of Amazon without the markup on the crap.
surfingdino
I still don't know why book publishers do not create a global platform for ebook distribution. It's not expensive and they'd get to keep all of the profits.
grey-area
I agree they should, but the key part of the platform is the reader hardware. They'd need decent and cheap ereader hardware tied to the store, otherwise who would want to buy books there?
See the Apple books store for an example of how little people care about ebooks if they have to read them on a phone or tablet. Barnes & Noble are doing better than them which is surprising given Apple's clout and their attempts to strangle alternative stores like Kindle with rules on in-app stores.
The market share is something like
Amazon (Kindle Reader) - 80%
Barnes & Noble (Nook Reader) - 10%
Apple ebooks (no reader) - 5%
Other - 5%
ChrisMarshallNY
Lulu seems to still be around. I think it gets used for self-publishing.
blackeyeblitzar
Amazon is simply using its control over a distribution channel to bully partner companies. They’re the new Walmart.
ilrwbwrkhv
I think it is about the time the world realizes that Amazon sucks for a while now.
> "Our expired terms with Bloomsbury were far out of sync with other publishers who sell books through our store. Unlike other UK publishers, with whom we’ve successfully negotiated in recent years, Bloomsbury has refused to recognize our continued investments in bringing books in all formats to readers."
Anyone know what this marketing-speak translates into?
Right now a book like [1] [2] is £8.99 paperback, £7.99 ebook from the publishers, £2.29 ebook from Kindle.
Bloomsbury seem to already be giving Amazon an enormous discount on the ebook; you'd think Amazon would be happy to renew on such generous terms.
[1] https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/mime-order-9781526675989/ [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mime-Order-Bone-Season-Book-ebook/d...