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Originally Posted by darryl
I wasn't into Fictionwise or Books on Board though I did hear very good things about them and their business models. I haven't looked closely enough into the matter to have an informed opinion on the reason for the demise of either. Common sense and logic would indicate that business models built on discounting Big Publishing's books had Buckley's chance of surviving agency. Logically such business models were doomed by its introduction. To survive the businesses concerned needed to find a new business model which could thrive under the new arrangements. Neither seem to have succeeded.
A matador of course may wave a red cape at a bull. I don't know what you call a person who waves a red cape at a penguin. Good luck.
We've had this discussion before and I don't expect we will ever agree. However, I would respectfully point out that pricing below Big Publishing does not automatically make a business model unsustainable nor constitute a race to the bottom. For the former to be true would require Big Publishing be so efficient and competitive that no one else could do better. Yet Amazon clearly has. Comprehensively.
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It's pretty hard for Agency to cause someone to go out of business if they go out of business prior to Agency pricing, unless of course you happen to have a time machine. It is, however, a convenient whipping boy. Most of the discounted book stores went out of business locally around the same time. Discounted books is a difficult market to be in. There is no margin of error.
Amazon happily adopted Agency pricing once their competition faded away. Amazon sustained below cost pricing on certain key books because they were able to use their much larger business to subsidize ebooks in order to maintain their market share. The only thing that Amazon from a pricing point of view has shown is that it's good to have deep pockets.