Quote:
Originally Posted by wannabee
Amazon will drop it's price to match competitor's pricing.
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Well, exactly.
But that's the entire argument being used
Amazon will undercut prices, tie up all the authors, drive everybody else out of business and then have a Monopoly on the entire publishing industry. At which point the consumers will be at the mercy of Amazon charging whatever prices they want. That was the entire point of Agency Pricing. It was billed to the consumers as a "We have to raise your prices in order to protect YOU the consumer" kind of thing by the publishers. But that was never true. The consumer has never been in any real danger. Somebody is always willing to meet consumer demand and as long as there is a demand for value priced literature - somebody will supply it. If Amazon stops, somebody else will start. The danger has always been to the publishers and retailer who can't or won't meet Amazon price structures, who find the role they play in the supply chain of author-publisher-retailer-consumer becoming unstable.
Amazon as an evil Monopoly to all literature just won't happen because there is a in practical terms endless amount of books begging to be published every year and setting up a website to sell digital books is technologically simple. If Amazon were EVER to reach the point where customers didn't like what they were doing anymore - then somebody else would jump on that business need and start undercutting Amazon.