Apple Is Happy to Sell You the Hachette Books Amazon Won’t Stock

Amazon doesn’t want to sell books from Hachette Book Group. More for us, says Apple, which is taking advantage of the fight between the world’s biggest bookstore and one of the world’s biggest publishers.

Its iTunes store is promoting a sale on digital versions of popular Hachette titles, including upcoming books from James Patterson and JK Rowling. Apple won’t come out and say that, exactly.

But if you head to the iTunes book page, you’ll see Apple is highlighting a “Popular Pre-Orders: $9.99 or Less” section. Meanwhile, Amazon won’t allow customers to preorder digital versions of any of those titles, and generally isn’t selling paper-and-ink versions, either.

Beyond the fact that Apple’s happy to take advantage of a (much bigger) rival’s fight, what’s particularly interesting about the promotion is that one of the chief disputes between Hachette and Amazon is over pricing of digital books -- Amazon wants to push prices down; Hachette does not.