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Originally Posted by AnotherCat
Would you point me to a trusted source where that claim is made. Thanks.
That because as far as the Bloomberg link says Amazon requires in its purchase contracts terms as good as is offered to others i.e. Amazon does not require to be the "cheapest", just that it wants to “ensure that Amazon is offered terms at least as good as those for its competitors.”. If that is so, then quite frankly, for myself, I just regard that as being good business.
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I think you are not getting what Amazon is doing and how it is anticompetitive. Lets say your book is being sold for $10 where $7 is for you $3 for the sellers. Now lets say a seller is willing to make less money and sell for $9 now where you still get your $7 but the seller get $2. But Amazon says that you have to relist with them at $9 meaning you get $6.7 and Amazon gets $2.3.
This way they wont face competition from other sellers as Authors or publishers wont be willing to take the hit for the discounts. So Amazon will keep out competitors from this business.
Publishers were forcing publisher pricing on Amazon so not to devalue their product as well as stop Amazon from becoming a monopoly that was wrong as well and it backfired by killing off most all the small sellers and gave the market to Amazon on a platter.
Unlike physical warehousing costs the price of bandwidth and data storage like with most electronics is coming down and sellers willing to take smaller margins per ebooks sold could come up and disrupt Amazon but because of these contracts that is unlikely to happen.
http://www.selfpublishingadvice.org/...ues-on-amazon/
Amazon is not the only ebook distribution channel to discount books without the prior consent of the author – and price drops are fine if they help you sell more books without denting your profit,
but only Amazon insists on being the cheapest supplier as part of their terms and conditions
only Amazon will drop your book if it’s cheaper on a different store