Posted in: Comics | Tagged: amazon, Comics, days of future past, hachette, marvvel, omnibus, x-men

X-Men Days Of Future Past Caught In The Crossfire Of Amazon War

Published Mon, 12 May 2014 06:19:49 -0500

On Friday, the New York Times reported that Amazon "is marking many books published by Hachette Book Group as not available for at least two or three weeks" and that,

A Hachette spokeswoman said on Thursday that the publisher was striving to keep Amazon supplied but that the Internet giant was delaying shipments "for reasons of their own." Hachette is one of the largest New York houses, publishing under the Little, Brown and Grand Central imprints, among many others.

The paper cites Amazon's determination to "squeeze as much margin out of its suppliers as possible" and that "for at least a decade, Amazon has not been shy about throwing its weight around with publishers, demanding bigger discounts and more time to pay its bills. When a publisher balked, it would withdraw the house's titles from its recommendation algorithms" and it recalls,

the bookseller pulled all the "buy" buttons for Macmillan books in 2010 in a dispute over e-book pricing. Two years later, Amazon was negotiating for a higher discount with the distributor Independent Publishers Group. "They decided they wanted me to change my terms," the IPG president, Mark Suchomel, said at the time. "It wasn't reasonable. There's only so far we can go." Amazon promptly removed more than 4,000 IPG e-books from its site. After lengthy and quiet negotiations, the parties came to terms and the books were restored.

They also looked today at affected authors. Now, Marvel Comics is exclusively distributed to bookstores by Amazon.

ICV2 has spotted a number of affected Marvel books on Amazon and notes that while many Marvel titles are easily and quickly available, that Amazon are instigating delays on "fast-selling movie tie-ins"

So, Captain America, Vol. 1: Winter Soldier Ultimate Collection has a two to five week delay on orders.

X-Men: Days of Future Past hardcover showing as shipping with a one to three week delay.

While All New X-Men Vol. 2: Here to Stay and New Avengers Vol. 1: Everything Dies are "In stock but may require an extra 1-2 days to process."

Other books such as Twelve by JMS and Chris Weston, out this week, seem to have had their stock deliberately run down. Its possible as books get sold and not restocked that this will spread across the line.

ICV2 also note that Marvel discounts are now generally a third to as half as much as DC titles as well as noting that Hachette's own Yen Press manga imprint was having even greater sanctions with longer delays, and lower discounts compared to rival manga titles.

And that Yen's most popular books, Black Butler, Soul Eater, Maximum Ride the Manga, and Pandora Hearts had many volumes delayed by up to five weeks, and without any discount.

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