Quote:
Originally Posted by Fbone
Thanks, Harry. Sometimes I forget people don't read my mind.
I remember Baen having to deal with MFN when entering Amazon's market. The specifics escape me but it did cause them to alter pricing.
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BAEN's issue isn't classic MFN (forbidding lower prices elsewhere) but rather a hardwired price match clause which Amazon demands from all publishers, traditional or Indie: if their Spiders detect a book for sale for less elsewhere, they will match the price, take their cut based on the original price, and pay whatever remains to the publisher.
(It causes a fair amount of pain to Indies listed on Google when Google puts their books on sale unilaterally because Google's share is so miniscule the sale doesn't move enough books to justify the losses at Amazon, Apple, or even Nook. Many Indies protect themselves by not going through Google.)
What BAEN did was raise their ebookstore prices by Amazon's cut and then divide the added revenue on their store between them and the authors. And they told everybody. So those of us who know how to buy at the BAEN store know to keep on doing it while all the Kindle owners who don't know about the BAEN store generate added sales offsetting the losses from the higher prices.
Far from ideal but the real world is far from ideal anyway.