Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
Agency was Apple's plan to achieve price parity at a level it could live with. Perceived value is BS on the part of the publishers to justify Apple's Agency plan.
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Read some of the links I posted in the past couple of days. Agency was being pushed by the publishers well before Apple decided to get into the ebook market, in one or two cases years before Apple considered ebooks.
The various actors points of view with regards to ebook pricing is quite rational from each of their PPV and doesn't require some vast conspiracy theory to understand.
Amazon uses the WallMart model of business, so they want to drive down prices as much as they can based on the theory that the cheaper they make things, the more people will buy and more importantly, the more likely customers are going to go to Amazon first. From their point of view, parts is parts and one ebook is no different than another. They make their money by squeezing the suppliers.
The publishers don't want the public's perception of the value of ebooks to be set too low. Their sells and subsequent profits is driven by top selling authors as well as well performing mid tier authors. They will go out of business if ebooks becomes a race to the bottom with regards to price.
Apple's preference is specific price points, a la the iTunes store, but they are willing to let the publishers set the price as long as the ebooks are not sold for less elsewhere. Apple is about high margins rather than market share.