Judge Approves Settlement In eBook Price-Fixing Case 242
An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday a U.S. District Judge approved a settlement between the Department of Justice and three publishers accused to colluding to inflate ebook prices (order). 'The Justice Department had accused Apple and five publishers in April of illegally colluding on prices as part of an effort to fight internet retailer Amazon.com Inc's dominance of e-books. The publishers who agreed to settle are News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers Inc, CBS Corp's Simon & Schuster Inc and Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group. Apple; Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and Pearson Plc's Penguin Group have vowed to fight the Justice Department's lawsuit with a trial due to start on June 3 next year.' The decision came after a lengthy period of public comment. According to the AP, 'The ruling released Thursday cast aside the strident objections of Apple, other book publishers, book sellers and authors who argued the settlement will empower Internet retailing giant Amazon.com Inc. to destroy the "literary ecosystem" with rampant discounting that most competitors can't afford to match. Those worries were repeatedly raised in court filings about the settlement. More than 90 percent of the 868 public comments about the settlement opposed the agreement.'"
below cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
how do you sell an ebook copy at "below cost"? that implies that amazon paid authors out of their own pocket? is this right?
(because, in the sw world.. amazon actually makes the author accept zero payment for the privilidge of amazon giving the sw away as promotion)
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Of course, the smart publisher would not sell a license to Amazon. Perhaps it's because my knowledge of the matter is admittedly incomplete, but I fail to see what leg these publishers have to stand on, considering.
Re:below cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the smart publisher would not sell a license to Amazon. Perhaps it's because my knowledge of the matter is admittedly incomplete, but I fail to see what leg these publishers have to stand on, considering.
Your so-called smart publisher would not value his brains when he has to shut down as a result.
Amazon has a huge edge on ebook sales - ask any publisher how many of their ebooks are sold on Amazon vs all other venues combined.
People don't go for the best products on the market. Everyone I know other than myself bought a Kindle instead of better alternatives. Their argument always was: "Oh, your device may be better, but Amazon has the largest selection."
"OK, what ebooks do you want that can only be bought at Amazon?"
No answer. Because there aren't any. Sure Amazon really does have a larger selection, but no one I personally know wants any of the exclusively Amazon ebooks anyway.
But would a consumer do that analysis? No. Not even when it's pointed out to them before they buy.
Guess how many of these Kindle owners buy ebooks from anywhere other than Amazon?
0.
So yeah, a publisher can say, "Nah, we won't sell on Amazon" to which Jeff Bezos will throw some change their way saying "Here're some pennies for when you become homeless."
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Actual publishers are smart enough that, if they would make more money not selling licenses to Amazon and instead selling through other outlets while shutting out Amazon, they would.
In the real world, what publishers did is sell to Amazon while trying to set up their o
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There were a number of different such efforts that were hyped within the industry as the thing that would displace Amazon and restore full control of e-book retail to the publishing industry.
The failure of all those efforts is why the big publishers were willing to join together and sign on to a deal to try to swap Amazon's practical domination of the retail e-book market for Apple domination on terms slightly more favorable to the publishers.
I recently became a small publisher and my impression of the big publishers is that they have many of the of same problems as the music industry and haven't gotten to the point of being forced to give up on DRM yet.
Any competing effort that shuts out amazon from sales also cuts out access to the most popular ways for people to read ebooks unless you go DRM free. If you want to keep DRM, you can do adobe versions of things that are usable on some readers, but you don't have nearly the market as with kindle,
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Hey! I have an idea. Why don't the publishers try and sell books directly to the public at reasonable, (i.e.: much less than paper versions) prices!!
Crazy, I know, but I'll bet they'd have more success than they've had desperately (and apparently illegally) trying to keep the ridiculously inflated price points they cherish for the digital product.
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Selling at a loss isn't smart.
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Now, cows milk sold in plastic bags however... that's just weird.
Re:below cost? (Score:5, Informative)
how do you sell an ebook copy at "below cost"? that implies that amazon paid authors out of their own pocket? is this right?
(because, in the sw world.. amazon actually makes the author accept zero payment for the privilidge of amazon giving the sw away as promotion)
The same way a grocery store can sell milk for $2/gallon when it really costs them $2.50/gallon.
They pay the distributor the full $2.50, then eat the extra 50 cents themselves as a cost of getting more people in the door.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader [wikipedia.org]
Amazon can make up the difference on other products that the user may purchase from Amazon when they stop in to buy a book. Other retailers (like B&N and Apple) have a less diverse product catalog so if they take a loss on eBooks it's harder to make up the difference somewhere else.
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well I do understand all about loss leader and all.
But if would be like that, then logically the publisher would just purchase mark up the books and make money out of amazon. it's not like they're physical goods anyways.
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And they typically only did it on a small part of the catalog- popular books to attract people, and then books further down the sales list would sell for a profit to make up for it.
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"Makes" is an interesting choice of words. SW creators are offered the chance to be the app of the day, sometimes they get a portion of their regular price, sometimes they don't. But they are never "made" to do anything. If they don't want to be the app of the day, all they have to do is say 'no thanks'.
Re:below cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, I understand why Apple cares because if Amazon is willing to under-cut the wholesale book prices, Apple will end up with less business (though, they could just not allow a Kindle app on iOS and their herd of "customers" would have no choice). But the publishers are big enough to not let Amazon push them around; wtf?
Re:below cost? (Score:5, Informative)
To them, its' not about what they are getting paid today, but about what they are going to be getting paid 5, 10 or 15 years from now. They are resisting being pulled into an endless loop of lower retail prices leads to lower wholesale prices, which leads to lower retail prices and again to further reductions in wholesale prices, et infinitum. In that scenario they end up subsidizing Amazon's success in the long run in exchange for Amazon subsidizing their revenues in the short term.
But the publishers are big enough to not let Amazon push them around
Only if their is a relatively diverse pool of resellers to whom they can sell. The Agency model allowed them to stop Amazon's price spiral precisely because Amazon couldn't force everyone else out via agressive loss-leading. If they are forced to give up the agency model, then they will have little recourse to prevent the eventual bankruptcy of their business (from their perspective at least).
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We are talking about a scenario where Amazon becomes the only game in town. A very real possibility due to Amazon's aggressive loss-leading strategy before the iBookstore forced the agency model on them. If the publishers don't agree to go through Amazon, then they sell e-books to NOBODY. However, if they do pull their e-books from Amazon's store, then Amazon still has lots of other e-
Funny, that (Score:2)
...you mean like every 'Stockholm Syndrome'-ed supplier to Walmart? The giant corporations more than willing to debase themselves for increasingly less profit to appease the 600-pound gorilla in US retail?
But I'm not surprised the publishing industry isn't already aware of this, given that the only
Re:below cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:below cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why don't you just buy a whole bunch of your books from them? It would be like a direct cash transfer from Amazon's bank account into yours...
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So do it using a holding company, wire transfers from multiple small accounts and computer algorithms. You could run the damn thing from a one room office.
As long as the money is your own and everyone gets paid properly it is perfectly legal to buy something while pretending to be someone else.
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Re:below cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
how do you sell an ebook copy at "below cost"
The problem is they are selling it below Apple's cost. According to Apple no one should be allowed to undercut Apple, and they have lawyers to prove it.
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Don't forget that Amazon also charges authors a "delivery fee" based on the size of the e-book. That's why they could give away 3G access for free for the Kindle. This fee is charged even for books downloaded over WiFi.
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Re:below cost? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is not true. Amazon may well say (to the publishers) 'nobody can buy books cheaper than the price Amazon' gets. Apple, on the other hand, says 'nobody can SELL books cheaper than Apple can'. Those are two vastly different things.
Even if nobody can get a better deal than Amazon, they can still sell them for the same or lower price than Amazon. In fact, that is what the publishers are complaining about Amazon doing to them. That, however, is competition, and results in lower prices for the consumer.
Apple's deal, on the other hand, says that nobody can SELL books for a lower price than Apple. Nobody even has the opportunity to use the books as a loss leader. That is anti-competitive behavior, and results in higher prices for consumers.
Low margin high volume (Score:3)
Re:Low margin high volume (Score:4, Informative)
I'm an author myself and haven't look at Amazon's policies but from discussions with others who have and are using them, I'm seriously considering it simply because I can make more money in the long run through them then one of the big name publishers.
The key element is what I as a new (unknown) author would be offered for a new book (about $0.02 per copy sold - maybe 5k books advanced). Sure sounds like lots of money but that's a meager $10,000 advance and may be the only funds I ever see for a book where as with amazon, I can price things where I feel confident the market will at least buy some and get the bulk of the money (75-85 percent) from each sale, meaning if I sell 1k copies in a year, I've made almost as much as the advance fee from the big name publisher and the income may continue coming in should the book continue selling unlike the big name, who may only print 1k copies and never promote or even sell them simply to tie me up in a contract. (I know one hell of a run on sentence). In other words, does Amazon make sense for me as a new/unknwon author and the answer is "Damn good possibility".
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It's really no different than what they did with paper books to drive the bricks and mortar stores out of business. As far as dealing with Amazon vs B&N - Amazon has their act together *way* better when it comes to interacting with suppliers. I recently bought another small publisher, and while Amazon was a little inconsistent with instructions on how to transfer titles, ultimately, everything was available to do online and could be done in about 10 minutes once we sort out which way to do it. B&
Will this result in lower prices? (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, hope this results in lower eBook prices.
I have a Kindle (and Nook tablet) that are underutilized because I refuse to pay more for an eBook than I do to have a paper book delivered to my house. About the only eBooks I read are from Smashwords [smashwords.com] or Baen [baen.com]. Almost every book I've bought from Amazon has been a used paper book because they are typically about half the price of an eBook.
After 2 years with the Kindle, I've bought exactly 3 Amazon eBooks - all purchased before traveling since I didn't want to carry around heavy paper books. I've never gotten around to reselling my used books (which would net me another dollar or two of savings), so my local thrift shop has been getting them.
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What are you willing to pay? I personally buy books from Amazon all the time for Kindle, even though I have a Nexus 7 now. Amazon offers the best prices out of everyone I've checked. I won't pay more than 9.99$ for a book and thusfar haven't needed too as all the books I want are that price or lower. Not true of Google Play however where I'd prefer to be buying books. Many of the same books on Google Play are 3-5$ more than Amazon.
I think on average I spend about 4-6$ on a book and I do that about once or t
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Snow Crash [amazon.com] - $10 from Amazon in paperback or kindle format, less than that from other sellers, and less than 1/5th that used. That's just one I know to be ridiculous from memory. How is it the same price to pulp a tree, print it, package it, and ship it to my house as it is to copy a digital file and send it over the internet (not even over wireless networks since most of the new Kindle's are WiFi only)?
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I'm not going to justify the higher price per se but just toss out some examples. I'm not too sure of situations in which technology ever made anything cheaper. In this case you get to download that copy over and over again for life (or at least as long as Amazon is alive). You get to store it in the cloud or on a small device instead of storing it on massive shelves through out a room of your house. You also get updates to that title if corrections are made in the future.
Did HD make TV cheaper? It didn't f
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Did HD make TV cheaper? It didn't for me.
Did HDTV make it any cheaper to create or distribute content? If anything, it made it more espensive since studios had to upgrade their equipment.
Did increaed fuel efficiancy in cars make the car or the gasoline cheaper? Nope.
I'm not sure this is a good analogy. I think it would be more like switching to an electric car where I can cut out the gas station entirely and refuel over the power lines that already run to my house, which eliminates the need for expensive gas stations and refueling infrastructure. The electric car is more expensive than a conventionally powered car (just like
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How is it the same price to pulp a tree, print it, package it, and ship it to my house as it is to copy a digital file and send it over the internet
It isn't, but that's not up to Amazon.
The publishers are charging more, to make more profit. Just like any business would like to do.
That doesn't mean it makes good business sense though. I think ~$1 less would be a good price point, cheaper for customers and more profit for publishers.
Re:Will this result in lower prices? (Score:4)
$10 from Amazon in paperback or kindle format, less than that from other sellers, and less than 1/5th that used. That's just one I know to be ridiculous from memory. How is it the same price to pulp a tree, print it, package it, and ship it to my house as it is to copy a digital file and send it over the internet (not even over wireless networks since most of the new Kindle's are WiFi only)?
I'm getting tired of this argument.
You're living in a fantasy world where the price of commodities is always dictated by production costs.
It may be true for expensive physical products, but when the price is low (as $10 is compared to a $500 tablet), the price is dominated by other factors.
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Because the price of something has little to do with the cost to make it. Other than providing a floor on the price in the long term for producers who want to stay in business and aren't loss leading something else.
For an interchangeable commodity with no barriers to market entry, sure the price will approach the cost of production (plus profit required to make whatever capital investment/risks worthwhile). But book are not such a product.
Re:Will this result in lower prices? (Score:5, Informative)
What are you willing to pay? I personally buy books from Amazon all the time for Kindle, even though I have a Nexus 7 now. Amazon offers the best prices out of everyone I've checked.
Ideally, I'd pay around $6 or so, which is what I typically pay for a used book to be delivered to my door. (and I usually pay $4 - $6 on Smashwords or Baen)
Here's an example of pricing that makes no sense (assuming free Amazon Prime shipping)
The Amateur - $16.99 hardcover, $9.99 eBook, $6.99 paperback, $6.88 used
Even moving off the bestseller list and going to an older book doesn't help
Fahrenheit 451 - $13.78 hardcover, $9.99 eBook, $7.19 paperback, $6.88 used
Why is the paperback priced lower than the Kindle? I paid $100 for an eReader and publishers want me to pay more for the privilege of reducing their distribution costs?
It does go the other way sometimes too -- usually (but not always), the eBook is cheaper than the hardcover, but more often than not, the eBook seems to be priced more than the paperback, and is almost always more than a used book.
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It does go the other way sometimes too -- usually (but not always), the eBook is cheaper than the hardcover, but more often than not, the eBook seems to be priced more than the paperback, and is almost always more than a used book.
You'll find it mostly with small publishers. Unless you can do enormous print runs and have a big distribution network, it's expensive to deal with print. Small publishers are likely to do their print distribution via print-on-demand (the big ones do, too, now, but they keep it secret), and the cost of reproduction and distribution is a significant factor. You can make more profit on a $4.99 ebook than on a $14.99 paperback unless the page count is really low. That's why you see a lot of POD stuff in 6x9
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oh...yeah...
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Lowest cost option is to just buy the paperback (used or new), read it, and sell it back on amazon a month later.
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So you're not only saying ebooks shouldn't cost more than paperback editions, but that they shouldn't cost more than used paperbacks? That's a bit extreme, no?
Well, not exactly, I'm saying that if publishers want me to use my expensive eReader to purchase books that have virtually no distribution cost to them, then they'll need to match the pricing of my other options to buy books -- including used.
Otherwise, they'll lose out on my money, they get very little money when I purchase a used book (it's not zero since my used book purchase helps subsidize someone else's full-price purchase of the new book), but if they sell the eBook for what I consider to be a reaso
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The author-editor team didn't make anything from your used books.
It's a sticky topic. I don't want to go off the rails from your post, just point out that used books have that crucial payment to the creators stripped out -- it's an unsustainable comparison. Matching that price means no books produced.
Well, I'm not sure that's true, but would love to see some numbers to prove it.
When I buy a used book, that means someone originally bought the book new, and if I buy his used book for 50% of the price of a new book, I'm effectively giving him a 50% subsidy for the purchase of the book and helping him buy his next book.
Of course, that effect gets lower and lower each time a used book is resold.
But it's easy for a publisher to shortcircuit this process - a month or two paperback release (when the books are
Of course (Score:3)
ban hammer these companies (Score:5, Insightful)
I am getting pretty annoyed how so many companies are being settled with for legal issues, at cost of a mere pittance to these companies.
I want to see the ban hammer come down and come down hard on these guys. If i break the law with something as simple as a parking ticket, that is a substantial cost to me. if I were to break the law in something major it screws me for life. Why is this not being applied to corporations?
Price fixing? confiscate ALL past profits gained from of the fixing, and fine future profits as an exponential multiplier of the fixing revenue. not to mention jail time for the crooks who okay the fixing. make companies leave yellow piddle marks when people even suggest they could be price fixing, colluding, bribery.
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watching the 2 conventions (repub and democ), it was so very clear that the repubs are wholly onboard the 'corporations are people!' bandwagon and the dems are not. they even said so in non-mincing words.
now, do they believe that? I doubt it. but it was refreshing to at least HEAR them say that corps have gotton out of control in the modern world and need to be reeled back quite a bit.
my hope is that the dems mean what they said. the reality is that they are owned by 'just different' corps and so busine
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Take their money and property, but jail time? Please.. Prison is supposed to be for people that are actually dangerous.
Like potheads? Prisons are full of those...
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I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that fustakrakich doesn't want them there, either.
I won't assume to know their intent, I was merely pointing out the simple fact that yes, while prisons are supposed to be filled with dangerous criminals like murderers, rapists, and Wall Street Bankers, they are instead filled with what amounts to people who engaged in morally harmless activities such as recreational drug use, which the government decided, arbitrarily, ist verboten.
This is not meant to disparage fustakrakich's statement in the least.
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Surely they should at least be banned from taking position as a CEO/CTO/whatever at any company in the future? If they OK'd price fixing, then they haven't demonstrated the moral/legal qualities required to hold such a position.
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If shoplifters go to jail, then executives who break the law for profit deserve to go to jail too.
They can compete with Amazon (Score:2)
They need to make it easier to download their ebooks, in more formats, without DRM (which Amazon has)so third party applications can organize the downloads better. In other words, provide more value than Amazon currently offers.
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Do you guys support Amazon as a monopoly? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you realize that the agency model was designed to allow for publishers to set the prices thereby removing the power from the distributor/seller and to disrupt Amazon's monopoly?
Amazon could, at first, offer lower prices to the consumer until they wiped out the competition but once they were supreme, they could jack up the prices or try to gouge the publishers/authors for lower wholesale prices with threats to not carry their books in the future.
You seriously should not be happy with a monopoly of the justice department enforcing a return to a monopoly. The market should be allowed to decide. If a book does not sell well, the market forces should cause the publisher to lower the sale price until it does sell.
Amazon, in the digital space, and Wal-mart in the brick and mortar space, were actively using predatory pricing to squeeze out all of the other competition. That situation is not good for the consumer in the long run.
Re:Do you guys support Amazon as a monopoly? Reall (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you realize that the agency model was designed to allow for publishers to set the prices thereby removing the power from the distributor/seller and to disrupt Amazon's monopoly?
So instead of Amazon having a monopoly the publishers get one. Your logic fails. Having a monopoly isn't illegal either. Abusing that monopoly is. Amazon never attempted to stop others from selling anything.
Re:Do you guys support Amazon as a monopoly? Reall (Score:4, Insightful)
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I concur. With the digital distribution of written works, so long as you have a decent selection of distributors (particularly ones that accept self-publication) then the barrier to entry to the market is almost nil. A cartel on the publishing side means that major publishers can try charging $100 for Harry Potter if they'd like, but that's really all they can do since they can't compel other publishers/authors to stick to their high prices.
On the other hand a cartel or monopoly on the distribution side cre
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Monopoly ... mono ... kind of indicates the singular so I don't see how multiple publishers can have a singular monopoly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel [wikipedia.org]
The main difference is that Cartels involve purposeful collusion, while Oligopolies usually end up with the same behavior without active collusion.
I would consider dumping product as an abuse of a monopoly and Amazon had done just that with our books in the past and there's no reason they won't do so in the future to further cement their monopoly in online physical book sales and e-books via the Kindle.
Which is probably why Amazon thinks the settlement is such a great deal:
Speaking at an event in California to unveil new Kindle Fire tablet computers, Amazon executive Jay Marine said the settlement was "great for customers."
(by customers he means Amazon can start again in 2 years and doe
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So instead of Amazon having a monopoly the publishers [i.e., more than one] get one. Your logic fails.
Speaking of logic fails...
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So instead of Amazon having a monopoly the publishers [i.e., more than one] get one. Your logic fails.
Speaking of logic fails...
No, not if they are acting in collusion. Then they are essentially operating as a single entity to fix prices. My logic is quite reasonable.
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It is a monopoly if they are colluding on prices.
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It is a monopoly if they are colluding on prices.
No;
That word doesn't mean what you think it means. [wikipedia.org]
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From the very link you provide, under "Historical monopolies":
Robin Gollan argues in The Coalminers of New South Wales that anti-competitive practices developed in the coal industry of Australia's Newcastle as a result of the business cycle. The monopoly was generated by formal meetings of the local management of coal companies agreeing to fix a minimum price for sale at dock. This collusion was known as "The Vend". The Vend ended and was reformed repeatedly during the late 19th century, ending by recession in the business cycle. "The Vend" was able to maintain its monopoly due to trade union assistance, and material advantages (primarily coal geography).
So, let me repeat: it is a monopoly if they are colluding on prices.
The reason being that they are now acting as one entity and are not competing with each other.
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Perhaps, but an oligopoly doesn't mean that they are actively colluding, as was the case here. Because of the active price fixing, this effectively became a monopoly because all members were in talks regarding keeping prices up.
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So your preferred solution is one where you can choose between multiple retailers but those retailers don't actually bother to compete with each other on price or content. That's not much better than an Amazon monopoly. By the way, the DOJ complaint details why your claims of predatory pricing by Amazon are largely unfounded
What monopoly? (Score:3)
An e-book monopoly? What on earth are you talking about? I'm sure Apple, the most valuable company in history, has more than enough cash to match whatever price Amazon feels like charging. And don't forget B&N, whose Nook is selling pretty well, if not as well as the Kindle.
In addition, a Kindle will easily read books from other online stores; about 2/3rds of the books on my Kindle didn't come from Amazon, and few of those books are available in electronic format through Amazon.
In addition, it's sill
Innocent until proven guilty (Score:2)
Third, even if Amazon was engaged in predatory pricing,this is no excuse for unlawful price-fixing. Congress “has notpermitted the age-old cry of ruinous competition and competitiveevils to be a defense to price-fixing conspiracies.” Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., 310 U.S. at 221. The familiar mantra regarding“two wrongs” would seem to offer guidance in these
The judge can't approve price fixing just because another company is dumping. If Amazon is dumping the publishers should sue Amazon. Or file a complaint with the Department of Justice. Amazon is innocent untill proven guilty of Dumping. They Judge can't take the law into his own hands and punish Amazon without a trial.
collusion? from news corp? (Score:2)
But news corp is owned by Murdoch! And murdoch is a major proponent of 'free markets'.
Boy, those free market libertarian fantasies always seem to fail. Even the champions of these ideologies exemplify the failures of deregulation.
Collusion. ~a market situation that arises when the people naively trust business so much that they have no rules, and the business is still prioritizing capital gain as usual.
I feel bad for authors getting it from both sides (Score:2)
Since publishers switched to the agency model, whenever I found an ebook priced higher than the print price, I added it to a "stupid publisher" wishlist. Some have dropped off when prices changed or I decided to buy them anyway, but last I checked, buying ebook version of all 342 of them, it would be about $1400 more.
Some of the prices were clearly higher because the publisher was too lazy to lower the ebook from hardback pricing when the paperback came out.
Most, though, were 9.99 and, more recently, 12.99,
which ecosystem gets wrecked? (Score:3)
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We're working on an ebook distribution model to put our ebooks in bookstores and give them credit as if they'd sold a paper book. Hopefully that will help out with some of the small retail channels. The catch for most publishers will be that for now it's not worth the trouble of DRM other than watermarking (and IMO, DRM isn't worth the trouble anyway). For us it's a way to get better visibility for customers and also try to support local places that we like to go and read.
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What instead of true self publishing there was a new third type of service that was similar to the editing/formatting/marketing services of a publisher, but because they only deal with e-books, doesn't have to maintain the physical production/distribution systems of a traditional publisher.
They would offer the author better terms because their overhead was lower. Quality would be better than self-publishing,
Or even better, they offered their services as a fee based structure. You, as the author, still ow
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Ebook more than print?! (Score:3)
I have owned a kindle for about a year and a half. I own over 110 ebooks (most are tech, but also some fiction, classics, etc).
I have *never* seen a printed book cost less than the kindle ebook of the same title. I essentially always buy the ebook over the dead tree version, and aside from instant access, the reason that I do so is because the kindle version is frequently 30% (or more) less cost than the physical version (before thinking about shipping costs). Where are all of these books that are more expensive for kindle than for the paper versions? (Hint: they don't seem to be O'reily, Cisco Press, Apress, SAMS, Sybex, or Microsoft Press.)
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It's not that hard, buddy.
1: Open amazon.com
2: Type in name of book. Say, 'fifty shades of grey'.
3: Boggle at the fact that the Kindle version is $12.51 while the paperback is $9.57.
More examples? Stephen King's recent book 11/22/63 is $13.59 paperback, $16.41 kindle.
One of my favourite Star Trek TOS books, Rules of Engagement, is $11.61 kindle. Two cents used. This is a book that I read in 1990. The cost to make it a kindle version was, at most, two hours for somebody to sit down and type it in from a
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I just typed in "50 Shades of Gray", and the Kindle version is $9.99 (no shipping). The print version is $9.57. So, you've got me by 42 cents before shipping, which still means that the Kindle version will be cheaper for 90% of amazon buyers (those with Amazon Prime are Excepted, although Amazon Prime allows for free Kindle lending, which could put the price at 0.00 for Kindle.)
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Trilogy-ebook/dp/B007J4T2G8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1347036166&sr=8-2&keywords [amazon.com]
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It's not that hard, buddy.
More examples? Stephen King's recent book 11/22/63 is $13.59 paperback, $16.41 kindle.
Do we have different internets? Are you in another country?
Sthephen King's book is 9.99 on Kindle.
It's $13.59 in paperback (pre-shipping).
http://www.amazon.com/11-22-63-Stephen-King/dp/1451627297/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1347037977&sr=1-3&keywords=stephen+king [amazon.com]
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Here's A Dance with Dragons, the first book that came to my mind, from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Dragons-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553801473 [amazon.com]
The ebook is $14.99, but you can find the hardcover in the amazon marketplace new from $14.36, and the paperback is just $9.99
Re:Lets face it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have mod points. Now, if only there was a '+1 Flamebait', because, as right as you are, you are going to get a thrashing.
Re:Boohoo your old buisness model is obsolete. (Score:5, Informative)
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So, you'll be replaced with lighter, more flexible, more competitive entities that do "editing, promoting, designing, and selling" and focus on competitive digital distribution.
The OP suggests that publishing model is obsolete and good riddance with publishers. So what he is suggesting is to get rid of publishers who take manuscripts, process them, and deliver them to market. You then suggest they be replaced with entities that do the same thing. The entities you describe already exist and they have a name: publishers. Will they have to adapt to the market? Yes,and those that hope to survive must. Would the market be better off if there were no publishers willing to risk auth
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If I had mod points I'd mod you up. I just recently got into publishing and it's pretty amazing how bad some good writers are. Bad in the sense that they construct weird sentences, or have terrible grammar, or can't spell (even with a spell checker), or gloss over plot holes or major inconsistencies. But they can often tell great stories better than people with good command of the mechanics, so you take them and help them clean the stuff up so people can read it. And it's much easier to take a great sto
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You know, I usually have no problem with seeing old model businesses make room for better distribution methods, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. It's not a maverick who is showing the way to a better model, it's someone using the good old method of turning a whole industry into a loss leader for their other products.
It would be one thing if it was a publishing company who was lowering prices by becoming more efficient, because then any publishing company could do the same things and compete. T
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A few things:
1) They have apps for Android and iOS that can read their books. It will even automatically download them.
2) They don't make much of a profit off of their LCD/eInk tablets. The money comes from the books.
3) You can't even argue that they lock you in to the tablets by only allowing their books, because you can side-load books.