Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
Who's up for a B&N dead pool?  |
Not me.
I think that the end of the conspiracy opens the door to creative marketing and pricing schemes; loyalty programs, bundles, coupons, flash sales, and *deep* B&M/ebook ties.
Now, I'm not saying B&N isn't skating on this ice; they are and I've been saying it for months now. But they have a lot of resources that the golden handcuffs of the price fix scam didn't let them use.
I also think that with pricing back in play there will no longer be a guarantee that Amazon will *always* have as good a price as anybody on any specific book on any given day. Comparison shopping will come back. And crossplatform compatibility will be *actually* meaningful instead of merely *theoretical*. This will boost multi-purpose devices and those that can be hacked into multiplatform functionality (Nook STR, Sony T1).
I think Adobe had better go on an evangelism kick to sign up hardware vendors to full ADEPT support (including B&N DRM). Maybe even developing an open android-based reader reference design.
Before this I was pretty down on B&N's long term prospects and I thought selling Nook was a given. Now I'm more neutral. If Turow and the apologists don't torpedo the settlement, I can see a lot more synergy between the storefronts and Nook.
BTW, bringing in indie booksellers as "victims" of the DOJ is disingenuous because none of them are credible ebook players under agency and because it is the BPH's volume discounting of pbooks that is killing them.
So far the modern ebook age has had three watershed events; the introduction of the Sony PRS500, the introduction of the Kindle, and the introduction of the price fix scam. Each one had its own after-shocks and follow-up milestones (Oprah hyping Kindle, the 4 hour price war,etc) and so will the settlement and the return of BPH ebook price competition.
Nobody knows what the after-shocks will look like, least of all the hand-wringing traditionalist pundits claiming the sky is falling. But the odds are that regardless of what happens to the BPHs, the consumers will come out ahead.
And, yes; One. More. Time: Antitrust is about *consumers*.
The DOJ trustbusters *only* care about harm to consumers. The conspiracy harmed consumers, which means the BPH execs are *criminals* and the DOJ now has to move to protect consumers from the criminal conspirators that inflicted *actual* measurable harm. (That is their job.)
Everybody else will just have to take their chances.
And they shouldn't expect any sympathy from the people they've been merrily ripping off for two-plus years.
