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They do parrot the publishers' party line about how the price-fix is meant to hurt Amazon.
Right.
As if guaranteeing Amazon a 30% margin hurts them any.
The first level of competition in ebooks is the consumer's choice of DRM ecosystem between Kindle, ADEPT, B&N, and Apple. And few mainstream buyers think of weighing the pro's and con's of that decision before getting their reader. At that point price-fixing merely mitigates buyer's remorse with the consolation that the other DRM camps are being equally ripped off.
Restricting price competition at the bookstore level is not just anti-consumer but downright stupid (as an anti-Amazon strategy) as it blunts the multi-vendor value of ADEPT in favor of the walled-guarden vendors who can subsidize/minimize the retail price of their readers in the assurance that they can make it up in ebook profits. At this point in time, and for the next couple of years at least, the real market power in ebooks will be determined by the installed base, not the rate of sale of readers. With ebook price competition off the table, the ebookstores can only compete on breadth of catalog (witness the rise of store-exclusives) and network effects (keep an eye on the lending pool websites) and both of those are install-base driven.
At present, Kindle install base runs about 11 million, Sony 4 (being generous), B&N 3, and Kobo, Pocketbook, Hanvon, and the Hanlin clones running a milion each, maximum. If 2011 resembles 2010, Kindle should be around 20 million by early next year with Nook easily in second place at something like 7-8 million. With everybody else fading in the rear view mirror.
Ecosystem-wise this means that the BPHs will still be tied to Amazon for at least half their sales for the forseeable future even if Apple does evict competitors off iOS since the rise of Android still favors Amazon over the epub crowd. Any market share losses Amazon might theoretically be losing to the rise of Apple will be more than compensated by the 30% margin and the defanging of the ADEPT "standard". And let's not forget that Agency pricing is increasing the rate of disintermediation of the BPHs by driving self publishers to Amazon and their 70% royalty.
If the BPHs were truly expecting the price fix to "rein-in" Amazon (which I doubt) they had better go back to the drawing board, because so far they've only strengthened their hand.
I'm thinking their goal really was to increase prices and reduce royalties. Short term, they've suceeded. Long term? It's early...
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