|
The big six publishing houses are not providing an irreplaceable service. If they were they would have nothing to fear and they wouldn't have to price fix. If they shutdown tomorrow they aren't going to off all their authors. The authors would find other companies to provide the same services and get their product to the market. Some of them are doing it already. There is nothing to fear as a reader.
I also don't believe that the big six publishing houses are stripped to the bone and at the edge of collapse with the only choice of the "agency pricing" to stay in business. They were running the risk of taking less income from a much more efficient distribution system. Amazon is now big enough to tell them that their piece of the pie has to be smaller and they didn't like it.
I personally think that Amazon deserves around 5-10% of the sale for the services they are providing. Running a website, downloading a 1MB file and running a credit card transaction is not that much value. They sell enough volume that they don't require a guaranteed 30% to make a substantial profit. It's not for me to decide though and it's not for the publishers to decide. They should have to compete in the market place for what the correct price is.
|