Amazon's Russ Grandinetti Tries to Brush Off Publishers' Concerns at Digital Book World Conference
Grandetti admitted that, although disagreements between publishers and booksellers are not new, the public nature of the Amazon-Hachette contract negotiations was rare. "We want to keep it rare," said Grandinetti, "We want to grow our business with publishers, which will also help authors."
Not afraid to address the sensitive nature of Amazon and publishers' relationship, Shatzkin asked about Amazon's pricing strategy and whether continually pricing books lower is necessarily helping the industry. Grandinetti maintained that Amazon takes into account several factors in their pricing strategy and measures closely how much demand shifts when prices are changed. "There are opportunities for lower prices to yield more revenue," said Grandinetti, "We've created a tool for Kindle Direct Publishing Select authors that help visualize how pricing will affect revenue yield. We share this data with our larger publishers too, some of whom are setting their own prices. Sometimes they use this data and sometimes they don't. We want them to benefit from this."
Ellen Harvey is a freelance writer and editor who covers the latest technologies and strategies reshaping the publishing landscape. She previously served as the Senior Editor at Publishing Executive and Book Business.