Dive Brief:

• Amazon and Penguin Random House, the world’s biggest publisher, are in talks to renew their contract, Re/Code reports.

• The need for a new deal opens up the possibility for the kind of disagreement that hobbled Hachette last year in what turned out to be a bitter dispute that led Amazon to pull Hachette titles from its site.

• That hardball move also brought the online retail giant a barrage of protests from authors and readers alike for months and is widely seen as leading to smoother deals for HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster in April. 

Dive Insight:

Amazon ultimately has not fared well with its approach to publishers lately. After the six-month negotiating ordeal with French publisher Hachette, publishers became bolder, both in bolstering their own retail operations and in taking on Amazon in their new agreements.

Neither side is discussing details of the talks between Amazon and Penguin Random House. Since its merger with Random House, Penguin is in a stronger negotiating position, while Amazon may be a bit more gun-shy this time around. Still, Bookseller magazine editor Philip Jones told The Guardian that negotiations could be strung out, considering Amazon’s history of “pulling out the big guns.”

“I can say that we have long-term deals in place already with the other four major publishers and we would accept any similar deal with Penguin Random House U.K.,” Amazon spokesperson Tarek El-Hawary told Re/Code.