On Sunday, Authors United will run a full-page ad on the New York Times with an open letter signed by over 900 authors asking online retailer Amazon to stop the dispute with book publisher Hachette Book Group (HBG), reports The New York Times. The major online retailer Amazon is in a battle with one of the world's biggest publishers Hachette over the terms of e-book sales for their new contract. While the negotiation is yet to close, Amazon has since stopped taking pre-orders, retracted discounts, and delayed delivery of books by some Hachette authors. These authors include JK Rowling, Stephanie Meyer and David Baldacci. The authors claim of being a victim of "selective retaliation" which they find is "inconveniencing and misleading its [Amazon] own customers with unfair pricing and delayed delivery". Dispute Amazon and Hachette are negotiating on how Hachette is going to sell its future books at Amazon. It’s been slated that Amazon wants to control how much an e-book should cost. Amazon’s contention is that an e-book should cost less, as unlike paperback editions, the production cost while making an e-book is minimal. Both the companies have remained aloof on revealing the proposed terms, however some reports suggest that Amazon also wants to introduce “print-on-demand’ capability, under which, as opposed to now when an author gets the rights to the book when its sales are down, Amazon wants to have the publishing rights when the book sales approaches 0. Authors protest that this will mean no room for negotiation -- ultimately less money for them.…
