Quote:
Originally Posted by ottdmk
I've said it before, and I'll say it again now: I am grateful that the Agency model came in.
That's not to say that there aren't many, many irritating things about the Agency model. Chief amongst them is the lack of ebook sales. (As in "20% off the latest Dresden Files", etc.)
Without Agency though, Amazon was very, very close to establishing a monopsony in the ebook retail market. Without Agency, I wouldn't have Kobo. Barnes & Noble's ebook division probably would've folded ages ago. Sony? Likely the same.
Amazon took the concept of loss leaders to an entirely insane level. No other retailer was willing to take the massive losses Amazon was on ebooks... and who can blame them? And the question always was: when would Amazon use their clout to not only dictate release dates of ebooks (the infamous "kiss the buy button goodbye" incident) but price?
I much prefer the market as it is now as it was before Agency. And since most books I want are now a few dollars less then a paperback... I'm good.
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Before Apple came into the scene, Amazon had roughly 90% of the market. If I recall at the time, their main competition was Sony. Since then, a number of stores have entered the market and Amazon's market share has dropped to 60%. What Amazon did was sell big name books that a lot of people wanted to buy for less than what they payed the publishers for those books. The rest of the ebooks were at normal price levels. Whither or not Amazon was actually losing money on ebooks is something that I don't think is public known, certainly, I don't think that Amazon has actually announced it one way or the other.