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Originally Posted by pwalker8
No, it's somewhat more complex than that. Apple's contract had what is called a most favored nation clause, which said that the publishers could not charge less somewhere else than they did at Apple. They were and are quite free to discount prices as much as they want. Indeed, they do discount prices on a regular basis. I purchased David McCullough's "The Wright Brothers" from the Amazon Kindle store for $14.99, which is a 50% discount from the list price and $3 less than the hardback price. There is even a great big "This price was set by the publisher" on the page.
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No one is claiming that the publishers don't discount. Occasionally. Sometimes. Rarely. What they don't allow is the seller to discount independently of the publisher. So, for example, Amazon or Kobo, can't offer a 10% off all ebooks sale, even if they take the 10% out of their portion of the revenue.
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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Much of the publishers' angst and desire to control price comes from the fact that Amazon has a monopolistic position when it comes to ebooks. The publishers really want to have alternate sales channels and not to worry about being held hostage by Amazon.
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I thought the publisher's desire to control prices was to protect the price levels of physical books. And to maximise their revenue (regardless of whether this actually maximises their revenue or not).
Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
The real issue is that the true narrative isn't all that straight forward and certainly isn't "Sainted Amazon and Evil Publishers". Both sides are large corporations that play hard ball. Amazon wants to squeeze the suppliers (i.e. publishers) just like Walmart, while the publishers want to maintain their current business model. Neither is particularly concerned about the people who buy the individual books to read.
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Actually, as a buyer of ebooks, Amazon is looking out for my interests much more than the publishers are. Amazon is actively trying to reduce the amount that I pay for ebooks.