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Originally Posted by Shades
True, but why keep them around for years after the sale? They more than likely had other intentions for the brand.
It's just too much of a coincidence in my opinion that three eBook stores closed after Agency went into effect.
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Any time you have a lot of a new market, it's not unusual to have a high number of companies in that market go belly up. Making money in an ebook store that isn't directly tied to a device is hard. Buying ebooks from 3rd party stores requires customers who are comfortable getting the ebook from that store to the device. Most kindle owners buy from the Amazon store. Most nook owners buy from the B&N ebook store.
Sony had their ebook store open before Amazon and had, arguably, a superior ebook device to the original kindle, yet they went out of business, mostly because customers had to jump through hoops to get books on their Sony ebook readers. Calibre started out life as a method of getting ebooks on Sony ebook devices. (kind of funny that people don't also point to the Sony ebook store which went belly up this year, but had been struggling for a long time. )
Apple's market share has been estimated at from 10% to 20% making them either the 3rd ranked ebook store or 2nd ranked, behind Amazon (60%) and B&N (25%). It's a pretty far stretch to claim that the 3rd ranked store drove all these stores out of business when they were not the ones who were selling ebooks at below cost. Yes, I know that several of those companies are suing Apple, but that is more along the lines of "You have money, we want money, you pay us money to go away" lawsuits than any proof of cause/effect.