PublishersLunch
With Tuesday's release of Oliver Pötzsch's THE DARK MONK: A Hangman's Daughter Tale in the US, the follow-up his to successful THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER, at least two titles whose US publishing rights are controlled by Amazon are now being carried widely by major ebookstores. The ebook editions for sale are published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which had previously licensed only print rights to the Potzsch books from Amazon Crossing (along with print rights to other titles from Crossing and Amazon Encore). Up until now, Amazon has sold ebook versions of titles from their growing family of publishing imprints exclusively through the Kindle store.
Houghton's ebook editions have a digital list price of $9.99 (and their trade paperback of the THE DARK MONK lists for $18.00). Both ebooks are listed for sale at Nook, the iBookstore, and Kobo, among other outlets (but Google Play still says no ebooks are available, and the ebooks are not listed in the Sony eBookstore either). At the same time, Amazon.com is selling Kindle editions of both titles, with Amazon Crossing listed as the publisher of those editions. The current Kindle price for DARK MONK is $8.99, with HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER selling for $3.99.
The HMH ebook releases raise the likelihood that the publisher has licensed from Amazon a broader basket of ebook rights for sale outside of the Kindle store--for the titles HMH has elected to reprint in trade paperback and/or for the new line that debuts in September under the New Harvest imprint, which will issue print versions of books from the start-up Amazon Publishing New York operation.
As we have reported previously, Amazon has said informally all along that they intended to make ebook editions of the Amazon NY titles available to all sellers, without specifying details of how that would work. (In their print deal, New Harvest is also the publisher of the print editions sold through Amazon.com itself.) The two-fold question has been, how will Amazon offer those editions and will other eretailers carry those ebooks if they are not exclusive to Amazon.
Earlier this year, major retailers including Barnes & Noble said they would not "stock Amazon published titles in our store showrooms," while indicating they would likely make those print titles available for ordering via BN.com. The presence of the two new Houghton-published Potzsch ebooks in all major ebook outlets may be an early indicator that New Harvest ebook editions could be carried broadly by ebookstores outside of Amazon, even if some physical bookstores decline to stock the print versions.
HMH said they were unable to comment at this time. Queries to the Amazon and the other major ebookstores have not elicited any information yet.