Quote:
Originally Posted by rdfry
The price can't be less than what Apple is selling it for. So yes it only works in Apple's favor.
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There is, no doubt, the same "no lower price" language in all the contracts (if not, it would not be a true Agency agreement -- the PUBLISHER is selling it and the price is not supposed to be dependent on the retailer (who is only an Agent, not a retailer, for these publishers).
Here, the publisher has set a different price depending on the agent, which is supposedly not allowed (of course, if there are no penalties in the contracts or no retailer/agents willing to push the violation, then the publishers can do what they want). At some point, the publishers will figure out that they can afford to be missing from the Apple iBooks store, since their books are available on many other apps on Apple's platforms, while at least some (if not most) book customers are both aware that their books are locked into Apples hardware with iBooks (and not even portable to their desktops). The Jailbroke/DRM scuffle in the iBooks store may push even more people to avoid buying there (not to mention cause yet another investigation into Apple). I'm just waiting for Apple to require an iBooks update and have that update not run on the original iPads (just as I can't use an original iPhone with iBooks, despite it being identical in capability to the iPod Touch that will run iBooks).