Following a dispute last year over e-book sales, Amazon.com has signed a digital and print book deal with Penguin Random House LLC, the last of the five biggest publishers to reach an agreement with the Web retailer.
The contract is for sales in the U.S. and U.K., Amazon spokeswoman Sarah Gelman said Thursday. The company gave no other terms. Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Penguin Random House, declined to comment beyond saying that the publisher is “still in business with Amazon.”
The agreement follows previous deals between Amazon and Harper Collins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers and Simon & Schuster. Amazon and Hachette were at loggerheads for much of 2014 because of disagreements over the price of digital books and shared revenue. Amazon has sought discounts, arguing that lower prices boost sale volumes and result in more total income. Book publishers resisted the move, while authors opposed Amazon’s tactic of removing titles from its Web store during the dispute. With the Penguin Random House deal, Amazon has resolved all of its major e-book disagreements.
The publishing industry has been grappling with shifting business models as fewer consumers buy print books and instead turn to digital titles. Amazon dominates e-book sales, a market it helped pioneer with the introduction of the Kindle reading device in 2007.