Quote:
Originally Posted by AnemicOak
I agree it wasn't good for them, but what really hurt the independents with Agency was that they didn't have books to sell from Agency pubs for months and months after it started. Some never did get certain pubs books back and then you have Fictionwise who never got any. While Agency probably didn't really hurt Amazon or Kobo I think the one it probably helped at all was B&N.
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Even that is debatable.
By their own claims they saw no growth in ebook share from 2010-11 and since then they've stopped bragging.
In a strongly seasonal business, they lost XMAS 2010 for lack of Pearl-screen readers, the 2011 STR tanked so badly they're still trying to clear inventory after 2 years, and
2012... well, we all know about xmas 2012.
The two years of the price fix were the time of peak ereader adoption rates--half to two-thirds of active ereaders were bought then--and because of Agency and the zero-margin hardware model that came with it the US market was foreclosed to everybody but the walled garden vendors.
All that the price fix achieved was to cement Amazon's market share. Apple's growing share is coming, directly or indirectly, from Nook, Kobo, and the indies. Plus casual readers, but casual readers are way less likely to even know of Kobo and the indies. The game isn't over for the Indie ebookstores but the further we get from the hobbyist/enthusiast era, the harder it gets for them to even get noticed.