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"agency pricing" = price fixing by publishers of books.
Not old distributors as they are cut out with e-books. They like Video and Motion Pictures are trying to maintain and increase profit margins of shrinking sales as legal production and distribution is faster and cheaper while free distribution of copyright product is easy and limitless without DRM. Old out of demand books were once sold sale price. 2 years later books were sold by pound to ware house book stores for pennies on dollar. Now agency pricing tries to prevent this because little real product expenses to recover. Not selling a older book for less only saves costumers money for higher margin new books. Once popular out of print old books now sell as e-books at near first edition price because of agency pricing. The agency has no expenses for slow selling books on Amazon or Kobo servers thus little incentive to lower price over time. Authors still receive same very small percent of shrinking sales.
Market for books shrinks with each new form of popular entertainment.
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