Amazon pressing for new terms in UK, wants to print books itself if publishers run out of stock
Amazon ‘bullies’ UK publishers on printing and promotions — There are hundreds of publishing companies in the UK — Amazon is facing a battle with UK publishers as it seeks to secure …
Context & Ripple Effects
The UK terms demand lands mid-escalation with Amazon refusing to take orders for coming Hachette titles — a fight the company confirmed as real and unresolved in late May 2014, with author criticism mounting on both sides of the Atlantic. The new ask goes beyond discounting: Amazon wants the right to print books itself whenever a UK publisher's stock runs out, plus leverage over promotions.
It is also the latest move in a decade-long pattern visible in the corpus: small publishers felt the squeeze of Amazon's buy-button control back in 2008, and by 2011 Amazon was signing authors directly, writing publishers out of the deal. The 2013 Apple e-book trial had already shifted public criticism toward Amazon's market conduct; this extends that pressure from e-books into physical print supply.
First-order effects
- UK publishers facing the terms must weigh granting print-on-demand rights against losing shelf placement on the dominant retail channel — the same buy-button leverage documented since 2008.
- Hachette, already seeing its titles listed unavailable under Amazon's order-refusal tactics since May 2014, now faces a second front where the dispute moves from e-book pricing into physical manufacturing.
Second-order effects
- Other major publishers watching the Hachette standoff must decide whether to pre-empt similar demands or coordinate a response, since conceding to one retailer invites replication across their catalogues.
- Print-on-demand providers and book printers become strategically exposed: if Amazon holds the right to manufacture out-of-stock titles itself, it captures both the sale and the production margin publishers' printing partners currently earn.
Third-order effects
- If the terms hold, the publisher's role shrinks further along the lines Amazon began testing in 2011 with direct author deals — toward a gatekeeper controlling discovery, price, promotion, and increasingly physical production.
- A retailer that can both refuse orders and print replacements effectively controls supply as well as demand, strengthening the case for regulatory scrutiny of platform power in bookselling that the 2013 e-book trial episode foreshadowed.
The trend: Amazon is extending its retail chokepoint in books from distribution and pricing into physical production, converting each negotiation — Hachette in 2014, UK publishers now — into another layer of vertical integration.