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fjtorres · 02-26-2011, 11:14 PM

Amazon's early lead in ebook sales was inherently unsustainable; the only reason it was ever that high was because they were operating in a near vacuum. Once they got meaningful competition in late 09 the numbers started to shift, *before* the fix came in.
There is no evidence that the Price Fix scheme has achieved nothing but provide small and medium publishers (and Random House) with a price umbrella to grow their market share at the expense of the Price Fix five and exarcerbate the disputes with authors over ebook royalty rates. Yes, Amazon's share has dropped. But with Nook grabbing 20% of the reader market and Apple shipping 30 million iPads, it was going to drop anyway.

On the other hand, both K1 and K2 were introduced with markups of 80-100% (iSupply teardown estimates) but K3 is shipping with maybe a 10% markup and selling via B&M retail at the same price as online. Quite a change in philosophy. Where's the makeup money coming from? Agency books, of course. Hardware and content support each other; it's all one company.

Finally, Agency Pricing is sooo bad for Amazon that the State AGs investigating it are targeting Amazon as co-conspirators along with Apple and the publishers rather than as victims. It may not have been their idea but it sure is helping them out. "Please don't throw me into the briar patch!"

Oh, and lets not forget that Amazon price competition was about using the ebooks to get people to buy Kindles; now, they're lowballing the Kindle to sell the books to buyers who can only buy DRM'ed content from them. Kindle has always been a separate market from the epub market; buyers choose one or the other and are stuck with it for the duration (barring DeDRM). All Agency Pricing achieved was give them more money to play with off those books.

All the evidence I've seen makes it clear Agency Pricing is good to Apple and Random House, great for Amazon and non-BPH publishers, and lousy for consumers and the Price Fix Five themselves.

Pretending it actually hurt Amazon in any meaningful way is just not in the numbers out there.

02-26-2011, 11:14 PM	#32
fjtorres Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,732 Karma: 128354696 Join Date: May 2009 Location: 26 kly from Sgr A* Device: T100TA,PW2,PRS-T1,KT,FireHD 8.9,K2, PB360,BeBook One,Axim51v,TC1000	Amazon's early lead in ebook sales was inherently unsustainable; the only reason it was ever that high was because they were operating in a near vacuum. Once they got meaningful competition in late 09 the numbers started to shift, before the fix came in. There is no evidence that the Price Fix scheme has achieved nothing but provide small and medium publishers (and Random House) with a price umbrella to grow their market share at the expense of the Price Fix five and exarcerbate the disputes with authors over ebook royalty rates. Yes, Amazon's share has dropped. But with Nook grabbing 20% of the reader market and Apple shipping 30 million iPads, it was going to drop anyway. On the other hand, both K1 and K2 were introduced with markups of 80-100% (iSupply teardown estimates) but K3 is shipping with maybe a 10% markup and selling via B&M retail at the same price as online. Quite a change in philosophy. Where's the makeup money coming from? Agency books, of course. Hardware and content support each other; it's all one company. Finally, Agency Pricing is sooo bad for Amazon that the State AGs investigating it are targeting Amazon as co-conspirators along with Apple and the publishers rather than as victims. It may not have been their idea but it sure is helping them out. "Please don't throw me into the briar patch!" Oh, and lets not forget that Amazon price competition was about using the ebooks to get people to buy Kindles; now, they're lowballing the Kindle to sell the books to buyers who can only buy DRM'ed content from them. Kindle has always been a separate market from the epub market; buyers choose one or the other and are stuck with it for the duration (barring DeDRM). All Agency Pricing achieved was give them more money to play with off those books. All the evidence I've seen makes it clear Agency Pricing is good to Apple and Random House, great for Amazon and non-BPH publishers, and lousy for consumers and the Price Fix Five themselves. Pretending it actually hurt Amazon in any meaningful way is just not in the numbers out there. Last edited by fjtorres; 02-26-2011 at 11:23 PM.