Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
How would you arrange it otherwise? Each book is unique, and is often published by a single publisher world-wide. You're saying that you don't think the publisher has the right to decide for themselves what it's sold for? You sound as if you're saying that agency pricing itself should be outlawed, but I really don't think that's practical. All sorts of things are sold through agency agreements.
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Each book is unique, but this is really meaningless. This is not a case of setting a unique price for a unique product. Publishers generally set prices for categories of books. For instance, looking at my original post, it seems new releases in Australia have a minimum price of $14.99. This can be contrasted with Amazon's $9.99 US before agency pricing.
I would now like to see agency pricing outlawed in this industry, which found a wholesale model perfectly acceptable until Apple came along. Having said this, the evil is not agency pricing per se, but the control of the industry by the big publishers who have shown no interest in really competing with each other. In Australia this has been a common problem with many industries, not just publishing. Under the old wholesale model, Amazon created real competition. By moving to Agency pricing the Publishers eliminated competition at the retail level whilst colluding with each other and Apple to ensure that prices were uniform and high. One only needs to look at the results.
What I would like to see in all jurisdictions for publishers is the maintenance of the wholesale model and the ability of Amazon and other retailers to compete, coupled with aggressive supervision of the Publishers to prevent collusion.