I have no problem with Agency pricing.
Agency pricing has led to a greater variety of places to buy e-books, imho. Now, it does suppress competition on price, but at least it's allowed places like Kobo to exist. While I'm aware that Amazon never treated all e-books as loss leaders, it's a well known fact that their profit margins are razor thin and that very few companies can survive at that level.
I don't want to live in a world where Amazon is the only place I can get e-books from major publishers. (Don't get me wrong, I'm sure places like Baen & Smashwords would survive, but I read more then the authors they sell.) I'm already annoyed with Amazon as they have sole e-book rights to Ian Fleming's catalogue.
Kobo has their faults, but they're more open in the e-book realm then Amazon, and they don't treat Canada as a secondary market.
Arrgh. Kinda rambling there. Anyways, I don't regard Agency as intrinsically evil, as long as the publishers treat the price points in a fair fashion. Most of the publishers I consume from set their e-book prices at slightly lower then the p-books, which makes sense to me. As I would've happily paid the p-book price back before I switched, I have no issues with paying a little less and getting a format I enjoy more.
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