Amazon Spat With Publishers to Escalate as Contracts End: Retail
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Amazon.com Inc.’s sales contracts with some of the world’s biggest publishers, Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, are next up for renewal, signaling that skirmishes over e-book pricing are set to spread.
The world’s largest online retailer is already feuding with Hachette Book Group and Bonnier Media. CBS Corp.’s Simon & Schuster and News Corp.’s HarperCollins will soon come up for renegotiation, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the contracts are private. That means best-selling authors such as HarperCollins’ Veronica Roth, writer of the Divergent trilogy, and Simon & Schuster’s Stephen King could be entangled in the controversy.