Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
As the report points out, under agency any discounting reduces the publishers' revenue and profit--under wholesale, any discounting comes out of Amazon's pocket. Big difference.
If the BPHs now want to improve their competitive positioning via discounting, they'll be paying for 70% of the discount. Their call, their profits.
And price fixing is by definition preventing retail level competition via discounting. Illegal price fixing is conspiring to fix prices. As pointed out repeatedly, the publishers admitted conspiring to achieve their goal. This time they negotiated. Again, big difference.
|
No, the legal definition of price fixing is when multiple competitors come together to decide on a price that everyone will charge. So price fixing is when two or more publishers come together and say we are going to charge X dollars for our books. Agency pricing is _NOT_ price fixing and has been upheld by the courts as perfectly legal, even if that doesn't follow the evil publishers narrative that some are so fond of pushing. The publishers have never admitted to conspiring to price fixing. They have never been charged with price fixing. They were charged with anti-trust on the charge that they got together to insist on agency pricing. They settled the case without admitting guilt.