Book Publisher: e-Books Will Be Our Downfall

Sacre bleu! Amazon and Google’s digital book efforts could force publishers to slash prices and put them out of business, says Arnaud Nourry, head of French book publisher Hachette. He is concerned that unilateral pricing by e-book resellers like Sony, Amazon and Barnes & Noble could destroy publisher profits.

“On the one hand, you have millions of books for free where there is no longer an author to pay and, on the other hand, there are very recent books, bestsellers at $9.99, which means that all the rest will have to be sold at between zero and $9.99,” Nourry was quoted as saying in today’s Financial Times...