Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
But the price won't be cheaper. Indeed, even if by some miracle the price is cheaper , what about customer service, Whispersync, cloud services, ability to read on more than one device? DRM is the LEAST of Amazon's advantages.
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Whilst DRM remains though the one company that benefits from it the most is Amazon.
I signed up to Kobo the other week because they had some ebooks discounted cheaper than amazon was selling them (non agency obviously). However, had I not known how to "free" the books and convert them to mobi to put on my kindle, I wouldn't have bought been able to buy the books from kobo.
I agree DRM isn't the only issue faced by non Amazon stores and they'll have an uphill battle on their hands to compete with the ecosystem amazon has put together. However, whilst DRM remains, there is no way for those stores to even contemplate competing with Amazon and selling to kindle owners.
In a way that's why I think agency pricing was a bad idea, when price is equal why go with anyone other than amazon who have all the value added services?
Get rid of the DRM though and we'll have a situation closer to music (although not quite the same as there's still 2 formats in play, epub and mobi, but closer than we are now imo). It also means authors have the ability to not put their book on amazon and still potentially sell to kindle owners.
If the big 6 all pulled their books from Amazon and sold via stores with more acceptable terms, as long as the books were DRM free, kindle owners that must have their favourite author would still be able to buy them.
Still, all that said, I think it's immaterial to the DOJ case. If publishers colluded, then it doesn't matter whether it was for the good of the ebook market or not, it's wrong, illegal and they should be held accountable for it.
If in years to come we end up with agency pricing again, fair enough, I'd rather authors be the ones calling the shots and setting their book prices than the publishers though. But, as long as they change their models legally, that's fine.