News Corp's HarperCollins Turns Against Kindle Store

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Last week, possibly spurred by the iPad’s big reveal, MacMillan Publishers and Amazon got into a disagreement over the pricing of the eBooks on the Kindle Store, which led to Amazon removing the publisher. Amazon said they were getting pressure from the “big six” book publishers, and now another – HarperCollins – has voiced their opinion.

At the earnings call for mega media conglomerate News Corporation, CEO and Chairman Rupert Murdoch, speaking about the Kindle pricing controversy (of course, remember that News Corp owns HarperCollins, another one of the ‘big six’ worldwide book publishers), said that, “We don’t like the Amazon model of $9.99 [...] it really devalues books and hurts all the retailers of hardcover books.”

Obviously not good for the consumer as another one of the big publishing houses is demanding that Amazon sell their books for more. Murdoch went on to say that their deal to sell books on the iPad’s iBooks platform gave them more flexibility, and higher prices. The iBooks deal, in turn, makes Amazon more perceptive to the big publishing houses’ suggestions that they charge $14.99 for an eBook.

It now seems that all the major publishers will fall in line and begin pressing Amazon to sell their new books at the $14.99 price. Amazon themselves said in their open letter earlier this week, “We know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.”

It’s ironic, considering that four years ago, Apple refused to budge with the music studios on the $0.99 pricepoint for iTunes songs, while Amazon promised them that they could sell their CDs or MP3s for whatever they wanted on their site. No word yet from the other four (of the big six), which include Hachette, Penguin, Random House (who was absent from the iPad keynote) and Simon & Schuster on their opinion on the matter, but we know how they’ll respond to the opportunity to charge higher prices, don’t we?