Amazon removes titles from japanese publishers Kindle Unlimited – PublishNews

Publishers complain that without warning, their titles were taken from the platform

Amazon is again in the middle of a controversy, this time with the japanese publishers. This is because during the week, the company withdrew more than one thousand titles of the publishers are Kodansha, Kobunsha, and Shogakukan program Kindle Unlimided, subscription of e-books. The newspaper The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said that “as part of an agreement to attract customers to the service, Amazon has made contracts with japanese publishers to pay them a premium by the end of this year". A publisher heard by the newspaper stated that the program was going very well.

The program charges us$ 9,60 per month of the customers so that they have access to over 120 thousand titles. In September, the company searched for the japanese publishers to renegotiate their contracts and, in the midst of negotiations, decided to remove the titles from Kindle Unlimited.

The Kodansha issued a statement saying that without any notice, their titles, the highest-rated on the platform were no longer available. Natsuko Tanabe, a spokesman for the publisher said that she is “asking Amazon to continue the service, as defined by the current contract". Two years ago, Amazon has also been involved in disputes similar with the publishers american Hachette Book Group and Simon & Schuster, when you also used aggressive tactics to renegotiate their contracts.

The titles of the publishers are Kodansha, Kobunsha, and Shogakukan, however, are still available on the website of Amazon Japan. According to the market research firm, Oricon Inc, Japan already is the largest editorial market after the USA, China and Germany, as consumers spent $ 1,01 trillion yen in books in the past year.