Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Suffering is relative, they certainly didn't accomplish their goals, have a large fine, have constant scrutiny on all their activities and have been tarnished in the public eye....at least to those with their eyes open.
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Plus, they haven't dented Amazon at all.
If anything, they cleared the field for Kindle to take over.
And the issue was never about agency: it was about pricing levels.
Amazon gives indies a form of Agency pricing control quite happily.
If you look at average BPH pricing over the years both pre-agency and post-agency you'll see that prices went from just under $10 before to an intant spike over $12 and then started to decline. Post-conspiracy, they kept on declining to around $8 in 2013 and started rising dramatically last year to well over $9.50. (Right around when the BPHs started talking of "plateauing" ebook sales.)
And, of course, after new Agency kicked in and the average went past $10, again, BPH ebook sales saw actual, measurable declines. And the BPHs are now stuck with their shiny agency contracts for a minimum of three years, probably longer.
And since 2015 isn't 2010, Amazon does give a frak about declining BPH ebook sales because they have Indie, Inc picking up the list sales. And because declining BPH ebook sales hurts Apple and Google and Nook and Kobo--all more dependent on BPH titles--than it hurts them.
When the dust settles on the whole sordid mess, the final verdict will be that the conspiracy made everybody a loser--consumer, ebook retailer, hardware vendor, and especially the tradpub authors and publishers. Everybody, except Amazon and Indie authors.
All needless.
All they really had to do was... nothing.