{"id":612,"date":"2014-11-17T16:48:53","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T08:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.haguepublishing.com\/?p=612"},"modified":"2014-11-17T16:51:42","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T08:51:42","slug":"the-end-to-the-saga-hachette-blinks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haguepublishing.com\/blog\/the-end-to-the-saga-hachette-blinks\/","title":{"rendered":"The end to the saga: Hachette blinks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hachette<\/a>The long running ‘negotiations’ between Hachette and Amazon has finally come to an end. And while it is unclear who ended up winning,\u00a0Digital Reader<\/a>\u00a0believes that\u00a0\u00a0Hachette blinked given that its revenues fell 18% in the third quarter of 2014.<\/p>\n

I’m also inclined to this view given that Hachette’s parent company reported on 13 November that Hachette\u2019s US revenues were down considerably from last year.\u00a0While the decline was attributed to difficult comparisons with last year when the company had an \u201cunusually high\u201d number of bestsellers they did admit that the \u00a0\u201cdifficult situation\u201d with Amazon also impacted sales.<\/p>\n

For all of Lagardere Publishing, revenue in the quarter fell 2.9%, but \u00a0the sharpest decline by far happened in the US, the unmistakeable conclusion being that at least a major part of this was due to the ongoing contract dispute with Amazon.<\/p>\n

The possibility of a circuit breaker in the ongoing dispute was the agreement Amazon negotiated with Simon and Schuster in October – which is probably similiar to what was finally agreed with Hachette. And while it is unclear what was actually agreed here’s what both parties said about the new agreement:<\/p>\n