@Fbone. Thanks for the link to the BOB summary judgement. The evidence makes it abundantly clear that BOB was in fact in trouble before agency. Whilst the transition to agency did result in BOB not having access to Big 6 ebooks for some period of time, the evidence shows that within a month and a half BOB had regained access to 3 of the 6 major publishers ebooks, including Penguin, Harper Collins and Simon & Schuster. It seems that BOB presented no evidence to back up the claims that it lost 70% of its customers because of this loss of access during transition.
It also appears that BOB was a very enthusiastic supporter of agency, since it was expected to eliminate the retail price competition and would negate the "deep pockets" advantage of its large competitors. It appears that the later legal proceedings were highly speculative. Whilst the allegations made, if true, may have resulted in a large payout, no evidence was provided to support these allegations. The court summed it up as follows:
Quote:
|
Following the completion of discovery, the Publisher Defendants moved for summary judgment on the grounds that BOB has not shown that the alleged conspiracy caused the failure of its e-book business or that it suffered an antitrust injury. The motion is granted. The Publisher Defendants have provided an extensive record demonstrating that BOB was failing as a business before the Publisher Defendants implemented the agency model for distributing their e-books in 2010, and that BOB could not effectively compete through discounting or otherwise. Rather than identifying agency pricing as the cause of its demise, BOB instead touted agency pricing’s benefits to both investors and creditors. BOB fails to rebut this evidence and thus has not raised a disputed issue of material fact that would entitle it to a trial.
|
@pwalker8. Though I didn't find your timeline argument convincing, it is clear that agency was not the direct cause of the demise of either Fictionwise or BOB. In the case of BOB it appears to have played only a minor role if any. In the case of Fictionwise we can speculate that it may have played some role in B&N's decision to exclude it from future plans, though of course in the circumstances that must remain sheer speculation.
This is the first time I have actually looked into this, and I found the BOB summary judgement very interesting. I detest agency and would have preferred to find that the conspiracy was indeed to blame, so was sceptical. However, it seems that the conspiracy was little more than a convenient scapegoat in this instance.