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As I indicated in my post above, Agency has been a disaster for the Big 5. Or, more precisely, not Agency per se but the use of Agency to set higher prices. The only way the Big 5 stood to win is if their market share held steady. Of course it did not and was never intended to. But even the intended effect of driving some customers to buy print books instead of ebooks benefited Amazon and cut into publisher profits. But of course, it is likely that many customers simply spent their money instead on Indie/Self-Published ebooks, benefiting Amazon even more. These Indie/Self-Published books are in direct competition with Big 5 titles. I think the effect of the higher agency prices has demonstrated this clearly, and the Big 5 will essentially have to reduce their ebook prices. But they will now themselves bear the brunt of such reduced prices, rather than Amazon doing so. It is difficult to see why Amazon would now want to return to a wholesale model. And of course, if it did, it would be unlikely to resort to deep discounting without significant contribution by the Publishers. Even then, it would probably be better for them to simply adopt the recommended price and welcome the defectors to the world of Self-Published and Indie books. Why would Amazon now return to subsidies. It is going to get everything it wanted without doing so, including cheaper Big 5 ebooks, though no longer, of course, at Amazon's expense.
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