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Originally Posted by pwalker8
No, I haven't because they were not accused of price fixing. The publishers were accused of agreeing to hold the line on agency pricing and Apple is accused of conspiring with them.
No, I haven't agreed that Apple and the publishers drove smaller eBook stores out of business. For one thing, Fictionwise was bought out _before_ Apple got in the ebook business and before the publishers got Amazon to agree to agency pricing. I find it very unlikely that Apple, the # 3 ebook store behind Amazon and B&N (who bought Fictionwise) drove anyone out of business. It's a lot more likely that if anyone drove them out of business, it was Amazon with their loss leader pricing.
My personal belief is that those companies went out of business and Sony pulled out of the ebook store business as part of the normal course of the definition of the ebook market. The creative destruction involved in the free market occurs in pretty much every line of business. According to the Small Business Association, 8 out of 10 new businesses fail in their first three years. I don't know why people seem to think that ebook stores are somehow magically exempt from those hard facts.
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Then please explain how as soon as agency started, that Fictionwise had to stop their business model that had served them well before agency? Tell me how BooksOnBoard had to stop giving credit back on buying eBooks? Tell me how Diesel eBooks had to stop giving discounts on eBook bundles when agency started? Tell me why these three shop had to stop their business models the day agency started? Fictionwise only lasted as long as they did after agency because B&N bough them. Otherwise, they'd have gone under sooner.
They did fix prices. They fixed them so no sales and discounts were allowed. They fixed them so they went up. They colluded to fix prices. They drove some smaller eBook shops out of business because they way they were no longer allowed to do business the way they were before agency.
Amazon's loss leader pricing had nothing to do with these shops going out of business. When they went out of business Amazon wasn't able to have these loss leader eBooks from the BPHs because of agency. So the prices were the same. If Amazon's loss leaders were the reason they closed, then they would have closed before agency. It wasn't Amazon that closed these shops. It was agency. Agency took away what made these shops different, what drove customers to shop there.