iBookstore now includes Random House catalogue


3 Mar 2011

Random House has made its full catalogue of 17,000 books, including best-sellers by Stieg Larsson, John Grisham, Dan Brown, Danielle Steel and Cormac McCarthy, available on Apple’s iBookstore.

This news follows the publisher’s announcement earlier this week that it is adopting the agency model for e-book sales in the United States. Under this model, publishers set retail prices for their digital titles, with a 30pc share going to the retailer and the remainder to the publisher. The model removes the option for discounting.  

“Going forward, Random House will set consumer prices for the e-books we publish, and we will provide retailers with a commission for each sale. There are no changes to our terms of sale for physical books,” the publisher said in a statement.

“The agency model guarantees a higher margin for retailers than did our previous sales terms. We are making this change both as an investment in the successful digital transition of our existing partners and in order to give us the opportunity to forge new retail relationships.

Random House is the last of the so-called ‘big six’ publishers in the US – Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Penguin Group – to adopt the agency model.

“iBookstore customers have already downloaded more than 100m books in less than one year, and we think they’ll love being able to choose from Random House’s incredible selection of titles to enjoy on their iPad, iPhone and iPod touch,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice-president of internet services.

Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com