Amazon Raises Prices on Macmillan E-Books, Stock Falls

Amazon has officially lost the battle with publisher Macmillan. Last week, the company was at odds with the publishing house over its desire to raise the price of Kindle e-books. Well, Macmillan won and Amazon announced that it will acquiesce to Macmillan’s desire to raise the price on Macmillan e-books. Macmillan will get its wish of pricing between $12.99 to $14.99. It threatened to stop selling new books on Amazon if the company didn’t agree to the hike. Amazon typically charges $9.99 for new releases and bestsellers.

There was some back and forth, with Amazon pulling Macmillan books off its store and Macmillan taking an ad out in the Publishers Marketplace magazine protesting Amazon’s business tactics.

While Amazon eventually agreed to the higher prices, it did so under protest. In the company’s announcement to customers, Amazon used language such as “…Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books.” Amazon clearly went out fighting.

The market wasn’t too excited by the announcement. Amazon stocks fell 7.4 percent in response to the news. [via Reuters and TechCrunch]