Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
By making it less likely that Amazon would gain control over the publishers, I think the agency years increased the chance that when I want book x, it will be in existence.
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That may have the (misguided) publishers' thinking but the reality is that during the period the price fix was in effect, mid-2010 through mid-2013, (give or take a month) the net share movement has been from B&N, Fictionwise, BoB, Sony, and maybe Kobo and Google to Apple. There is no evidence to suggest Amazon lost any ebook share; if anything, the whining over their power only grew louder during the conspiracy years.
The conspiracy achieved three things: one good for consumers, two dubious at best, none good for the conspiring publishers.
The good thing it did was accelerate indie book acceptance by consumers and established mid-listers by providing pricing cover so indie ebooks could range as high as $6. Indie ebooks were always going to be a force in the long run but going from single digits to 25-30% unit share in three years?
The first bad outcome was that by removing price competition they killed creative retailing tools the smaller vendors relied on stay afloat. They also made Amazon a more attractive channel for consumers because, with the prices equalized, Amazon's other advantages became decisive.
The second bad outcome was that the "guaranteed" high margin on Agency titles gave the retailers added revenue to play with and Kobo, Nook, and Amazon chose to use it to move their dedicated readers to a near-cost pricing model. (Anybody see coincidence in Kobo moving to higher reader prices as the price fix started to be dismantled?) This foreclosed the US market to smaller hardware-only reader vendors.
The effect of Agency was to kill small ebookstores and drive out most reader vendors in favor of the big walled gardens. The only winners were Apple, who were able to launch their ebook business without having to compete on price, and Amazon, who have seen their competition crippled and neutered just as ebook adoption exploded.
As Scott MacNeally of SUN said, when HP bought APOLLO, "Now I only have to worry about what one opponent might do." Before Agency, Kindle faced gadget competition from the likes of Sony, Samsung, Acer, and Asus, as well as Nook, Kobo, and the small niche gadget vendors. After Agency, their strongest foes are Apple and Kobo and Kobo is the only cross-platform player that might be growing.
Yup, the conspiracy sure hurt Amazon...
