JK Rowling and the battle of Amazon

Author tells her Twitter followers to snub online giant

WHEN her extraordinarily popular Harry Potter novels were riding high in charts around the world, the thought of J.K. Rowling falling out with a major book seller would have been unthinkable.

But now the multi-millionaire author has weighed in to a bitter row between online giant Amazon and Hachette, the publisher of The Silkworm, her second novel written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

The two companies are locked in a dispute over pricing and profits in the United States, which has delayed delivery of more than 5,000 Hachette titles, including those by Rowling and Malcolm Gladwell.

On its American site, Amazon is even preventing customers pre-ordering The Silkworm, the latest novel in her Cormoran Strike series and the sequel to last year’s successful The Cuckoo’s Calling.

Amazon US even told customers they would have to go elsewhere if they wanted to buy the title. The news prompted Rowling to respond to the spat on Twitter. Using the account she set up in the name of Robert Galbraith, the author encouraged her three million followers to order The Silkworm from high street stores and independent booksellers. One tweet said: ‘There are lots of ways to order #TheSilkworm in US, as Amazon kindly suggest.’ On another account under her own name, the author set up a hashtag encouraging her followers to buy from sources such as Third Place Books, a small firm in Seattle. She wrote: ‘@ThirdPlaceBooks Booksellers were the secret of Harry’s success, now #CormoranStrike is going to owe them big time, too. #buyfrombookstores.’ In another tweet, Rowling said: ‘I LOVE Third Place Books and so does my good friend Robert Galbraith...’ A source close to the author told me last night that Rowling was prompted to react when Amazon US released two statements, the second of which all but told fans of Hachette’s titles to either put up or shut up. The source said: ‘She decided to take to Twitter when she saw that Amazon had actually sent out a statement telling customers to go elsewhere if they cannot find the books on Amazon.’ The Silkworm is due to be released on June 19.