Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Oh, there's a reason it's widely shared.
Among the evidence the DOJ collected and submitted to court for the conspiracy trial there were emails and other documents proving that intent. It is why they were willing to take less money and cost their authors money.
From:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...-judges-words/
...among other widely disseminated sources, including tbe Judges full pu lished ruling.
It's not as if the BPH execs were shy about publicly expressing their intent and rationale. Reidy herself said so openly.
Likewise it is no secret why the BPHs prefer print: they controlled access to market and between their steady flow of "fresh produce" and coop payments (pay to play, aka, payola) they limited the exposure and market reach of the books of smaller publishers, limiting their growth, keeping them weak, and making them easier and cheaper to buy out. That is how the US trade publishing business went from dozens of big-ish publishers to just five monsters in one generation, the "stunt and buy strategy" of the multinationals.
All those imprints the BPHs own and ship books under? They used to be healthy, independent publishers with decades of success (and IP) that were "convinced" to sell to the megacorps.
The BPHs stock in trade is access to bookstore shelves, it is their reason for existing. And wide acceptance of ebooks undercuts and devalues that power. Despite all the inherent advantages of their size and enormous IP catalogs that meant they could easily dominate ebook sales in free and open competition, they chose to "throw in" with Apple in an illegal collusive scheme to limit ebook adoption by raising prices. In fact, Apple ended up forcing them to cap the price hike at $15 because left to themselves they would have gone much higher, totally killing ebook sales and Apple's iBooks with it. Of course, by dictating pricing to the BPHs Apple became the defacto leader of the conspiracy which is why they were left holding the bag when the BPHs settled. (Well, that and the tactics they used to get Random House to join Agency.)
All publicly documented and hard to handwave away.
https://www.theverge.com/2013/6/13/4...x-ebook-prices
You're totally correct in your understanding.
Mind you, it didn't have to be this way.
All the BPHs had to do was notice tbat Sony killed their lrf walled garden to support interoperative epub and realize the best way (for everybody) to prevent Amazon domination was to support a multivendor alternative.
But Amazon was just an excuse, the real intent was to cripple ebook sales.
Which they have now succeeded in doing.
But only to their books.
Everybody else is doing fine. |
I won't rehash my opinion of Cote, other than to say she is hardly an expert on why people in the publishing world do something. She's expressing an opinion, not stating facts.
Kind of funny that Amazon was just fine letting the BPH use agency pricing once Amazon had mostly eliminated the competition in the ebook world.
Once again, value is set by what people will pay. People as a whole seem to place the value based on the work rather than the format of the work. Obvious some do not, but for the most part, the market has spoken. People are willing to pay more or less the same price for an ebook as they pay for the paper book.