[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Fictionwise is owned by Barnes & Noble-a supporter of agency pricing. As for consumers, well, of course, they like low prices in the short term! I was talking about publishers and booksellers, as you well know.

If your notion of "everyone in the industry" ignores the people providing the money, it's very flawed.

Yet Fictionwise still exists.

Fictionwise is dying; B&N is not bothering to support it--even to fix its growing list of outdated links and inaccurate statements--and that isn't likely to change unless agency pricing is overthrown, because its underlying framework relies on features no longer available.

I don't know what Fictionwise's long term prospects are now: I do know that they would have been unlikely to survive a price war with Amazon, which would have eaten the big fish first, then the little fish.

FW had a strong feature in a potential war against amazon: Format flexibility. The non-DRM'd ebooks are offered in several formats--they can say, "you can use multiformat books on your next device as well." But removing all the agency books gutted the catalog too much for that to be a compelling point for the majority of customers.

Anyway, I know there is no way to convince ebook consumers who are focused on low prices that agency pricing could possibly be good, so I'm not going to try.

I don't need to be convinced; I'm not running short of things to read. If Macmillan and Random House vanish tomorrow, I still won't be short of things to read. I'm looking at it from the outside (because agency pricing or no, I'm not dealing with DRM) and thinking, "huh. that can't last."

In any case, this is moot. The lawsuit will most likely fail, because there is simply no EVIDENCE that Apple and the Big Six publishers colluded to fix prices: innuendo and conspiracy theories aren't evidence. Now something may turn up in the discovery process as the lawsuit goes forward, but if nothing does, then the case will be dismissed. That's the likely result, by at least 4 to 1.

I find it very likely that Apple & publishers colluded to arrange the agency pricing, because it doesn't work well if only one or two of them participates. I suspect at the very least emails coordinating the date for the switch--connecting to Apple's ibookstore opening; it's pretty obvious that 5 companies didn't spontaneously decide to drastically change their business model.

Whether multiple supposedly-competing businesses changing business structures all in the same way at the same time is an anti-trust violation is for the courts to sort out.

It's possible they used illegal tactics to convince Random House to join them; I'm not sure what kind of business pressures are legal. I'm not sure if Apple's language about "buy this book from us" (or whatever's actually used) is legal for agency arrangements--not sure if they've got an obligation to inform the customers that they're acting as an agent, not a retailer. And that's without assuming they did anything overtly threatening or otherwise shady.

But in the long term, we are better off with lots of players with the ability to set pricing, rather than one BIG player, who can lower prices short term, then jack them up long term.

We are better off when STORES can set pricing, not manufacturers. The manufacturers can't respond fast enough to market shifts, and have a hundred-plus year history of business practices based on simple, stable transactions; they sold by the truckload for a set price, managed returns often by formula. Now they're dealing with individual sales, and botching their accounting, and annoying a lot of consumers.

Y'know, the people who pay them? The ones who are keeping them in business? The ones who don't know DRM exists until they "upgrade" their K2 to a Nook Color and discover none of their "ebooks" can be read on their new "ebook reader" and want to know why.

The closure of Borders should have high-ranking executives in all 6 agency publishers sweating bricks. Because they're going to *need* ebook customers, who are only going to get more aware of $3 indie author books as time goes by.

ou still would have to find evidence that Apple and the publishers got to together and said , "Ebook prices are naturally too low; we have to band together to push them higher!"

There's public evidence of them saying "ebook prices are too low! We cannot allow $10 ebooks to continue!" I'm less sure about the "we must band together" part in public--but they certainly managed to all switch over at the same time.