Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
I'm fairly certain it doesn't work that way. If everyone else chooses to not sell your product, they can't then point and claim "monopoly!"
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Exactly.
For that matter, some companies choose to sell through their own channels exclusively and still aren't monopolies. SEARS and CRAFTMAN tools through the ages. Just one of many examples.
This whole thing just smacks of panic and desperation.
First, as one of the comments at the source points out: one store with only 5000 books on the shelves is hardly a threat to anybody.
Second, nobody knows if the store is an experiment (in tracking shopper behavior, for example) and intended as a one-of, or if it is a pilot for a future chain. Or as a challenge to their competitors to stop boycotting Apub titles.
Third, making this stunt about Apub (which the ABA isn't--they are complaining about *all* the books at the store) ignores history: before the multinationals took over Manhattan Publishing, DOUBLEDAY operated its own chain of stores and its own Book Club operation that sold heavily discounted copies of its own books.
Nothing Amazon is doing is all that unusual legally; it has all happened before and it will all happen again. With nary a legal problem.
Now, as to the terms Apub offers Amazon LLC, that is naturally confidential but there is a good hint in the public terms disclosed for the Scout program. And those terms match what Amazon said publicly during the Hachette catfight: 35% author, 35% publisher, 30% retailer. Apub contracts have other provisions, like for Kindle First, which is a lump sum payment but substantial enough, apparently.
I see lots of hyperventilation but little legal issue.
But that is just me going by the historical record. Let's see what happens as the story spreads and lawyers chip in.