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Originally Posted by stonetools
The purpose of agency pricing was to reduce Amazon's power and allow a diversity of ebook retailers, not solve every problem in the ebook marketplace. It did what it did.
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What additional ebook retailers do we have now than we did a year ago? Where are the new thriving stores that agency pricing will encourage? Where are the customers who decide anew, based on store quality and features, where to shop for ebooks every time a new book comes out?
I don't see "splitting the market between Amazon and B&N" to be a great improvement worth a 50% hike in consumer prices for a huge array of products.
I don't see that agency pricing caused any of the split in the marketplace--the new business went to stores with wifi devices, not stores with better customer service or more detailed search engines or more personalized selection options.
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Reversing agency pricing would in all likelihood re-establish an Amazon monopoly,
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Reversing agency pricing would let small ebookstores, those without a wifi-enabled device connection, to offer incentives to customers.
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As for Fictionwise, do you honestly think that it would have survived long trying to out discount Amazon?
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They didn't need to out-discount Amazon; they had a paid membership package with small bonuses, and regular "buy one, get one free later" options. Those worked to create customer loyalty--and since they offered a lot of multiformat books, they did so without requiring lock-in. *That's* supporting diversity in the marketplace.
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How do you know it wasn't on the point of bankruptcy when BN bought it? Frankly, we just don't know how successful its business model was.
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And this justifies agency pricing destroying their business model? "
Maybe they were already having problems, so it's okay to coordinate our efforts to raise prices in a way that knocks out small companies?"