According to BoB the agency pricing will start on april 1st

[DanT]

According to BooksOnBoard the agency pricing will start on April 1st

http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...-agencypricing

Originally Posted by BooksOnBoard

In an unexpected move, 5 of the industry’s top publishers have advised us in the last week that they are imposing a Required Ebook Pricing model on all ebook stores as of April 1. This is not an April Fool’s joke, but a significant price increase on many of our popular ebooks. In order to keep offering these titles, we are required to comply. These publishers are the following and all their imprints:

for those 5 publisher
* Hachette
* Penguin
* Harper Collins
* MacMillan
* Simon & Schuster

They also going to start charging tax for US customer on those publisher only

Originally Posted by BooksOnBoard

US customers will be charged sales tax on the titles from these publishers where you have not been charged sales tax in the past. This will not be true of other publishers titles, still representing the largest portion of our catalog.

[asjogren]

That tax issue is going to be very interesting. There are State sales taxes, or not. County sales taxes, or not. And City sales taxes, or not. And even some counties have discounts on State sales tax because they abut a State with no sales tax.

And where am I when I buy the eBook? Which tax gets collected? And will they actually send the money to ALL the appropriate taxing authorities? And how will we know?

[Elfwreck]

I loved this part:

The Authors are NOT getting additional royalties for this change. Everything goes to the publishers

I don't think that's entirely true--I think the authors are likely to get a bit more in royalties in some cases. The *main* difference is that BoB can't offer discounts.

And someone needs to sort out the laws about pricefixing, because demanding *every* retailer carry the same price should be problematic. Retailers should, at the very least, be able to refuse their own percentage and lower the price to cost.

Not sure how that fits with "agency," though. And I suspect the real hit will be to the 5 publishers' pocketbooks, when they figure out that a $14 ebook selling next to a $9 ebook from their competitor doesn't get bought, "bestseller" or not. Especially if stores like BoB and Fictionwise (wonder what they're going to do?) offer discounts & reward points for other purchases, but not the "agent" books.

If their profits sink like a stone, how fast will they react? How fast *can* they put in another contract, if one of them realizes they'll lose serious parts of the ebook market by being priced higher than other companies' books?

(Is kinda cute, really, watching the Big 5 insist on their sales terms. Like they don't have any real competition in the ebook world because they dominate the print world. In the print world, there isn't an option of, I will go read something else for free. In the ebook world, you're always choosing between a bestseller and an rss feed download.)

[mikemc2]

Every time I read about the "agency model" one name is missing - Random House (the largest English language publisher in the world). Interesting that RH doesn't seem to be too eager to jump on the agency bandwagon. Of course the Other 5 will make less per book under the new scheme but they will get to control the pricing over the life of the product.

[asjogren]

It seems that some assume that the 5 publishers WANT eBooks to succeed.

This is a disruptive technology for them. They are trying to apply cart-and-horse thinking to a burgeoning horseless-carriage world.

[frozennorth]

Just tried to buy an ebook from Harper Collins website in anticipation of getting my Boox next month. When I clicked on the epub link this message popped up:

At this time, new titles cannot be purchased at this site. The ability to download previously purchased titles is unaffected; sign in and visit your 'My library' to download previously purchased titles.

Looks like they put sales on hold until the new system is implemented.

[riemann42]

Well, there goes the hope that the Agency model would be used to drive down prices where appropriate.

I'll vote with my wallet: If I can afford it, and it is the same or less than paper, then OK. If they charge more than paper, or more than I can afford, library time.

What a stupid move. I hope this is fear mongering on BoBs part, and that the only books that double in price are the super high demand books, and the rest are discounted.

[charleski]

This is the result of the publishers' contract with Apple. If they let other bookshops undercut the iBooks store then Steve will throw a chair around or something. And right now I suspect they're far more interested in building a solid presence on the iPad than in catering to small stores like BoB.

BoB's scare-story announcement needs to be taken with a big pinch of salt - a lot of their prices are already well above the $14.99 point and the REP will be less than BoB currently charges (though that doesn't mean that BoB will adjust their prices down to match). But I'm sure there will be a bunch of small price rises as well.

Of course, this is a good way to fire up a shopping-spree among the gullible...

[bgalbrecht]

I figure I've got a couple years of reading material in electronic format, so I hope it doesn't take more than that for the publishers to figure out that most ebook buyer won't buy an ebook that's priced higher than the cheapest paper edition.