Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike L
It's not the same at all.
The Net Book Agreement (NBA) forced retailers to sell at a particular price. It was a form of restrictive practice that was made illegal in UK, for everything except books, in the 1960s.
The retail price of ebooks is not subject to any such control. The retailer is free to discount books, or not, according to their judgement.
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But they aren't, Mike; that's the point. With "agency pricing", the retailer is NOT free to set the price; the price is set by the publisher, and the retailer is not permitted to discount it.
Eg, to pick an example entirely at random,
here is the Kindle e-book of Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express". You'll see that it says under it "This price was set by the publisher". Amazon cannot discount it. As it happens, in this particular case, I think that the publisher's price of £3.99 is entirely reasonable, but that's certainly not always the case.