Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
You are comparing apples and oranges. Third party loyalty programs aren't particularly germane when trying to figure out if the agency model raised or lowered consumer prices.
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The point is that the agency model prevented retailers from implementing loyalty programs. When I saved $100s of dollars a year by joining a $15 loyalty program and it was discontinued (or unavailable for agency publishers), or bought at a retailer with a rebate program, it had the effect of raising consumer prices.
There's list price, regular price, and sales prices. Sure, sometimes regular price is the same as list price, but when agency pricing forbids any price other than list price, it's effectively going to raise prices unless they drop the list price. In my experience, before the agency pricing time period, when there were only a hardcover or trade paperback and ebook, the ebook had a list price matching the paper edition, and an regular price around 20%-40% off list price, but there were some ebooks sold with even larger discounts. With sales, some books would even be priced cheaper than a mass market paperback. After agency pricing, the ebook list price generally dropped to some standard percentage off the cheapest paper edition, and of course, was never priced less than the price of a new MMPB. In general, if there was just a hardcover and ebook, the ebook got priced slightly higher than a trade paperback, just a TPB and ebook, the ebook got priced slightly higher than a MMPB, and MMPB and ebook were priced the same.
My memories could be off, but it's my impression that the big 5 publishers have done a lot more promotional discounting of ebooks (for example $2.99 everywhere for a day, week or month) since the DOJ anti-trust lawsuit than they did during the agency pricing era.