Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Or, to put it another way: The more heavily they discount the best-sellers, the less latitude they have to cut prices on other ebooks.
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From *that* one publisher.
Those rules only apply to the BPHs, not the rest of the publishing industry.
Amazon just might be willing to live off the profits from the rest of their catalog.
If anything, the extent to which Amazon discounts BPH books will be a good test of how important they are (or aren't) to the Kindle business. The less they discount them, the less competitive advantage they see to that discounting.
Things have changed a *lot* in the two years of the Price Fix Conspiracy; Kindle installed base has grown to something like 20 million instead of the 2-3 million it was before and Kindle entry-level prices have dropped from $189 to $69. Factor in the new markets they are playing in and that the US market may by plateau-ing and Amazon has a lot more flexibility than they had when they forced them to yield to the conspiracy.
At some point I think we'll see just how much money this conspiracy has cost the BPHs and their stockholders and I don't think the bill is going to be small. We have yet to see all the consequences.