Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
He is not advocating agency, he is advocating Apple. 
Practically speaking, it is the same. |
Actually, I'm doing neither. I'm pointing out that agency does not preclude the reseller from running a loyalty program. I really don't care one way or the other what sort of contract the publishers have with the resellers as long as I can buy the books that I want in a format that I want.
Agency was pushed by the publishers, not Apple. It makes sense from their point of view. It protects them from a reseller who views books as just another commodity and potentially could devalue books in the eyes of the public. If you read the articles, this is what the publishers feared Amazon was doing. You can debate if that fear was justified, but it was the issue that agency was suppose to combat.
Apple was simply trying to enter the ebook market. If you read the history of Apple's ebook store, you see that they actually wanted some sort of tiered pricing schedule, much like there music store has. They bought into the agency model because 1) they already had such a model in the app store and 2) it was a way to bring the big publishers on board.
This narrative that I'm some Apple fan boy is a rather silly attempt to dismiss my points without having to think about them. As I have pointed out before, I don't buy from the Apple ebooks store. If I was the Apple fan boy that you guys are trying to paint me as, I would be. My issue with this whole situation has never had a thing to do with Apple, but rather the DOJ and government twisting anti-trust law to hobble competition in the ebook market. If the DOJ and Judge Cote had not gotten involved, we would see a much more robust ebook market and possibly many more choices in how we buy ebooks.