Quote:
Originally Posted by plib
Personally I think they recognize their arguments have little merit or acceptance, so it's probably a sensible decision. Still it would be nice to see one of them have the balls to stop sneaking around in the dark and actually come out in the open with what they're trying to force on the reading public.
|
Perhaps they think it i easier to give the DoJ what it wants for 2 years than to spend millions of dollars fighting the case. After 2 years, they are free to revert to the agency pricing.
Besides there are numerous problems with the terms of the settlement. Consider just this one: The publishers have to allow Amazon to discount to whatever price it wants as long as Amazon makes a profit over the publisher's book line in the aggregate.
- What constitutes the book line? Is it every imprint that a publisher has or does each imprint stand on its own?
- How will they get Amazon to disclose the sales data? No one has been able to get Amazon to be forthcoming to date and Amazon is not a party to the settlement.
- What constitutes "profit"? If Amazon sells all of S&S books for a total of $10,000,000 and all of the ebooks together bought by Amazon from S&S cost $9,999,999.99, so that there is a 1-cent "profit", is that sufficient under the terms of the settlement?
- Although the publishers cannot use the agency system for 2 years, there is no requirement that the revert to the previous wholesale model. They could devise some other model or change the discount terms of the wholesale model, perhaps give only a 30% discount off retail and instead increase co-op fees for physcial displays in front entrances of b&m stores.
There are a lot of unknowns. Everyone assumes that Amazon will get to sell all the books it wants and at whatever discount price it wants, but there are a lot of outstanding issues that need to be tackled. Let's not forget that one of the settlement requirements is that the current contracts be terminated within 30 days. There is no requirement that the publishers enter a new contract with Amazon or do so under specific terms other than no agency pricing, free to discount, profit over the line, and no most-favored clause.
S&S might decide that Amazon's demands are too onerous and announce it will no longer sell its ebooks through Amazon. Two days later, Hachette might follow suit. No collusion, just an independently made business decision.