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Originally Posted by fjtorres
If you look around here at deal threads from 2008-2009 around you'll find that Amazon prices were *NOT* always the lowest. On some books they were, sometimes, but not always and not on everything. Through micropayment rebates, coupons, loyalty programs, or just short-term sales, it was often possible to get ebooks cheaper than at Amazon. There were entire websites dedicated to tracking promotions so readers could find the best prices.
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I did not mean to say that they were cheapest for everything. But that they had the biggest discounts total across all titles on average all the time, or to put it in different words: Amazon was operating with the lowest profit margin for their ebook division. That is probably not correct either since Amazon never had to worry about paying Adobe anything to DRM their books.
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The reality was that there was a healthy, competitive market where *in aggregate* if you *only* bought from one ebookstore, Amazon was cheapest. But if you shopped around and bought from whomever had the lowest price on a given day, you would save more than just going with Amazon.
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Was this also true for books from the NYT bestseller list? Or was there a really good chance that Amazon would have the lowest price on those? As far as I understand (please correct me) those NYT bestsellers were the ones that Amazon primarily concentrated on for their discounts. (and still do?)
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It was also a reality that Amazon's mythical 90% share (from early 2009, after the Oprah endorsement coup) was already gone [..] on the eve of agency was really in the 56-60% range by some published estimates.
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Amazon is holding steady at 60-66% (they have actually *grown* their share thanks to their exclusive indie titles) of a much bigger market than in early 2010
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Thank you, that makes a lot more sense. I have read the 90% right before agency, and that they about kept their market share afterwards, but that it went to about 60
. So if they were already down there by march, then it looks even more impressive for Amazon - it did not matter much to Amazon whether agency was coming or not. The bad part is where Apple picked up market share from the indie stores. That makes me want to see Apple lose this particular case in this thread even more - for what they did they should pay.
Now it looks like that we are going back again to agency once the court ordered discounts run out. And Amazon may just in time have something up their sleeve with the indie dominated Kindle Unlimited. Very smart planning, or just a natural evolution? Anyway, doesn't matter, I have my front seat with my Kindle Unlimited subscription.