With no end in sight for Hachette’s long drawn out pricing battle with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Donna Tartt’s ‘The Goldfinch’ might be the silver lining in dark cloud looming over the publisher. Trouble has been brewing in the book world since this May as Amazon and Hachette could not agree how to split the revenues from sales of ebooks. Though many new titles from Hachette fell in the line of fire, the Dickensian novel from Tartt stood the test and has sold over 583,000 hardcovers according to the Nielsen Book Scan generating over $10 million in revenue for the publisher.

Advantage Hachette

The Hachette Book Group does seem only slightly ruffled by the dispute with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) which is evident from the former’s sales growth this year. The New York based publisher’s revenue from the United States and Canada for the first half of the year was in the order of $300 million which was an increase of about 5.6 % compared to the revenue for the same period last year. Apart from ‘The Goldfinch’, bestsellers such as J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Silkworm’ (written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) and new titles by James Patterson and David Baldacci contributed to Hachette’s revenue growth.

Early release gave ‘The Goldfinch’ an edge over other books

Sales of ‘The Goldfinch’ was not affected due to the Hachette – Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) price wars as the battle started almost half a year after its release. Hence, the hardcover book is currently priced with a nifty little 40 % discount on Amazon while the Kindle eBook costs $6.99. Winning Amazon’s ‘Best Book of the Year’ award last November did not hurt its sales either. The book continued to be on the bestsellers list not only due to the eCommerce giant’s help but also because of support from other independent booksellers such as the Changing Hands Bookstore who claim that there has been a constant demand for the book partly due to peer pressure.