Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
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.
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These third party stores were doing business in a way that before agency worked well. After agency, didn't work at all and they had to be like everyone else. They had nothing unique going for them. Same eBooks, same price, no sales, no discounts, no loyalty programs, nothing. So yes, it did become hard to complete against the larger stores like B&N and Amazon. Amazon actually made out because of Agency. It backfired big time. Instead of leveling the playing field, they just ended up making shops like Amazon & B&N more popular then they would have been.
The little guys who didn't have a Reader tied to their store did indeed suffer. But they were doing much better before agency because they knew what worked for them and agency took all of that away.
You are wrong when you say/think that agency did not cause these shops to close. It most certainly did. Before agency, there were lost of messages hon MR about Fictionwise and BooksOnBoard. They competed with Amazon and did it well. Agency made that impossible and try as they might, they ended up not being able to stay in business. To compete with Amazon, you need to do something different. Agency took away that something different.