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Originally Posted by stonetools
As a consumer, I don't like agency pricing, but let's face it- everybody except Amazon welcomed agency pricing.
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Several million customers did not "welcome" agency pricing. Fictionwise did not welcome agency pricing.
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The publishers, indie bookstores, Google, as well as Apple. Those who claimed that agency pricing somehow disfavored Kobo or the smaller players just don't understand the situation.
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Agency pricing has basically destroyed Fictionwise; their entire economic model was based on features that are incompatible with agency pricing. It's damaged several other sites that counted on the ability to offer coupons and promo discounts to compete with larger ebook stores.
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There is universal consensus in the publishing industry that Amazon was discounting below cost on ebooks in order to gain market share and drive competitors from the ebook market.
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Amazon was indeed running popular books at a loss in order to drive sales in other areas, and Amazon had enough diversity of content to do that. Agreeing that this was at least somewhat problematic, however, doesn't mean one needs to hail agency pricing as a good solution.
And whether or not agency pricing is "evil," the way it was established may well be an anti-trust violation; businesses aren't allowed to coordinate with each other to keep prices above a certain level so they'll all get profits they're happy with. And several publishers did say the problem with Amazon's sales wasn't that they weren't making money--it was that the general public was getting used to the idea of $10 books, and they didn't want to allow that.