I'm fascinated by the argument that the agency model was solely response for taking Amazon from 80% to 60% of the ebook market. I guess that the only reason people were buying from Amazon was price and their customer experience and support sucked. Forget the fact that other ebook stores were largely matching Amazon's price. The first opportunity of agency pricing and 20% of the market place abandoned them. It's funny though I've heard Amazon criticized for a lot of things (and I've criticized them myself) but I've never heard Amazon's customer service and user experience largely criticized.
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