Amazon Fears iBookstore & Seeking 3 Year Contracts

iPad and iBookstore, is venturing into publishing in a couple of weeks. Amazon is fearful, juding by their actions. Amazon's Kindle could fall by the wayside regarding e-book sales.

Due to anticipation of Apple's grand opening of iBookstore, Amazon is now trying to get e-book publishers to sign three year contracts. These contracts have a "no compete" clause so that other retailers will not get better prices or treatment, according to The New York Times.

Earlier this year, Amazon had a conflict with Macmillan over them switching to an agency model. That model allowed retailers like Amazon to act as agents for the publisher. These agents would also earn a 30% commission on prices set by the publisher. Amazon commented that those prices were "needlessly high."

During that well publicized issue, Amazon's stock fell. At that point, Amazon temporarily stopped selling all Macmillan books in protest.

It will be interesting to see just what Amazon will do to protect their share of sales on April 3rd when Apple's iBookstore launchs in the US on iPad.

Apple has also been trying to get participating publishers involved with its iBookstore, The New York Times reported. They have been courting Macmillan, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Hachette.

Random House Publishing is the only one who has not signed on yet, The Times said.

Participating publishers will use the agency model for iBookstore sales. The publishers will set their own prices and Apple will get 30 percent of those sales.

Apple does have include a "no compete" clause that states that publishers must not allow other retailers to sell their e-books for a lower price than their iBookstore offers, according to The Times.

Amazon also launched their new Kindle for Macintosh on Thursday. It is a free application used for reading Kindle books on Macintosh computers.

Twitter Everywhere - Use It From Nearly Anywhere

This week Twitter announced a new platform known as @anywhere. The app helps popular websites integrate Twitter features with ease. Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, Bing, YouTube, AdAge, MSNBC, Digg, The Huffington Post and The New York Times are a few of Twitter's partners with a headstart on this project.

On the Twitter blog, Biz Stone states: "We've developed a new set of frameworks for adding this Twitter experience anywhere on the web. Soon, sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com."

He went on to say: "Our open technology platform is well known and Twitter APIs are already widely implemented but this is a different approach because we've created something incredibly simple. Rather than implementing APIs, site owners need only drop in a few lines of javascript."

Amazon Rated Most Trusted US Brand By Customers

Milward Brown's new report states that consumers have rated Amazon.com to be the top performing brand in the United States.

Milward Brown's research was done in connection with The Futures Company. The report - "Beyond Trust: Engaging Consumers in the Post-Recession World" introduces "TrustR," a new metric for understanding the relationship between consumers and brands.

TrustR calculations are reached by looking at consumer responses to questions such as "how trustworthy is this brand?" and "would you recommend this brand?". Then the scores are indexed and added together to reach a TrustR score. An average score is 100, and anything over 105 is considered a good score.

Amazon scored 123, FedEx 122 and Downy, Huggies, Tide, and Tylenol all scored 120. Toyota, WebMD, Pampers and UPS scored well and followed closely behind.

"When a person recommends a brand they put their own personal trust and credibility on the line. They are only willing to recommend brands which themselves have proven reliable and trustworthy," said Nigel Hollis, EVP and Chief Global Analyst of Millward Brown.

"Amazon.com, the brand ranked first in the U.S. by TrustR, has achieved that status through exceptional service and providing its own recommendations to users. This combination has made Amazon the gold standard of trust and recommendation in the U.S."

Click here to read the report's press release.

Click here to read the summary of the whole report.

Amazon's "Charge When Ship" - Alienates Sellers

Many Amazon sellers on the Amazon Sellers Forums and on other forums are upset about the new "Charge When Ship" program which has gone into effect.

Some feel like the new program is Amazon's way to bully the larger sellers into signing up for Shipped by Amazon, thus causing sellers to pay more fees. They also feel that it doubles sellers time involved in processing a sale due to buyer questions about tracking numbers not registering any information with the delivery service as soon as the buyer gets the number from the seller.

These higher volume sellers have declared that they will no longer sell on Amazon because of "Charge When Ship".

At this time, it seems that relatively few lower volume sellers are complaining about "Charge When Ship".

What does this mean to buyers? Several sellers have stated that due to the shrinking product availablity and lack of competition caused by sellers leaving the site, they are raising prices on their products.

About Charge When Ship (from Amazon's site)

Charge When Ship is an easy way to process orders and keep buyers informed about shipments, providing the best customer experience possible. Here's how it works:

When you ship an order, you confirm the shipment and provide shipping information.

We display the shipping information in the buyer's Amazon account, and we also send the buyer an e-mail notification with all of the shipping information.

As long as you confirm that the order was properly shipped, you will be paid in accordance with the Marketplace Participation Agreement. We charge the buyer after you confirm shipment (rather than when the buyer places the order), and then we credit your Marketplace Payments account. Of course, just as now, there may be circumstances where payment may later need to be refunded, for example when the buyer does not receive the order, or it is not as described.

Click here to watch a recorded Charge When Ship webinar.