A contract negotiation dispute with Amazon in February that resulted in the removal of 5,000 titles from Independent Publishers Group (IPG) has finally been resolved following negotiations between the two, and most of the books have now been made available for Kindle again. No details on the new deal have been provided. IPG has offered to give up its own share of the sales revenue on the returned titles through the end of August to help make up for author’s lost revenue.
IPG President Mark Suchomel said in February that Amazon proposed new terms that were “substantially changed” from the previous terms, and the new deal would result in lower revenue for content authors. A counter-offer by Suchomel was rebuffed, and Amazon pulled the e-book versions of the titles. Physical copies of the removed books were not removed from sale.
Amazon has been accused by authors, publishers and even former Steve Jobs of pressuring content providers to take less revenue, using removal of the providers’ books from the Kindle library as a bargaining chip since it is the single most popular e-bookstore.
