[QUOTE=Sao;1697918]Amazon is hardly the good guy. Before Agency pricing, Amazon was losing money from the sale of each ebook, but they were willing to do so to undercut the competition and drive them out of business.
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I think it's fair to say that Amazon was the good guy here, at least if you are a consumer. Amazon was not acting altruistically, of course, but their pricing favored the consumer (at the expense of the publisher and retailer).
And - importantly - Amazon was not losing money from the sale of *each* ebook...even Amazon could not sustain that for long. Amazon was losing money from the sale of newly released hardback NY Times bestsellers. Amazon makes most of it's money from non-bestsellers, and these were not sold at a loss. The bestsellers were just a loss leader to get people in the door. So to speak.
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In the short term, I can see people saying, "Who cares that Amazon loses money as long as I get to pay less!" The question, however, is what will happen in the future if one company gains the bulk of all ebook sales. Will Amazon be content to keep losing money forever? I doubt that.
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People often raise the specter of low prices leading to complete market control, but it never happens in practice. There are too many competitors that would swoop in as soon as you tried to do this...and particularly in the case of books, there is competition from all forms of entertainment, not just from other books. And, essentially, this claim is that we should be happy that new books now cost $15 instead of $10, because if they cost $10, Amazon might gain control of the market...and what? Raise the price to $15?