Bookwire officials have announced a fresh agreement with retail giant Amazon, marking the end of a highly publicised renegotiation standoff. This dispute had led to Amazon’s brief removal of e-book titles from Bookwire, a leading German digital distribution and publishing services company.
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The tension escalated when the existing contract between Bookwire and Amazon expired earlier this year, triggering intense negotiations. Amazon responded to the contractual deadlock by delisting Bookwire’s e-book titles, a move that sparked concern within the publishing community.
Industry insiders informed Publishers Weekly that Amazon had preemptively removed the titles, allegedly weeks before the contract’s expiration, leading to significant revenue losses for the affected publishers.
“The issue from Bookwire’s side is to ensure that Bookwire’s publishing clients are no longer confronted with declining margins as they have been in the past.”
Bookwire letter to customers
Bookwire’s March 13 statement, while withholding specific details, assured that the “relisting of the e-book titles is expected shortly,” signalling a resolution to the situation. The company acknowledged in a letter to customers the negotiation challenges, pointing out the high stakes involved in securing a sustainable partnership under fair terms amid rising costs and shrinking margins.
It added: “The issue from Bookwire’s side is to ensure that Bookwire’s publishing clients are no longer confronted with declining margins as they have been in the past.
“We have invested heavily over the past few years, with significant effort and increasing costs, to build a successful cooperation with Amazon Kindle. Therefore, we cannot accept the current offer from Amazon.”
Amazon had claimed the forced removal of Bookwire’s content was due to the contract’s end. They highlighted the strenuous negotiation phase, during which Bookwire allegedly pressed for terms that would be a “significant move backwards in economics” established over the years of their partnership. “Our contract with Bookwire has ended, and we regret that we had no choice but to remove the ebook content they distribute to comply with the expiration of our contractual right to sell it,” the e-commerce giant had stated.
Bookwire distributes over a million titles for approximately 2,300 publishers worldwide, not just in Germany but also across English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish-speaking regions.