Quote:
Originally Posted by FizzyWater
I'm trying to figure out what kind of competition this would be - other than more stores - with Agency pricing...  There's no competition if everyone charges the same price. |
Exactly.
If the prices are the same, whatever competition survives will play out on other terms: service, support, catalog size, compatible hardware variety...
Those of us who were here before, during, and after the Conspiracy can remember that, before, the standard answer to the question of where to find the best prices was:
"If you're willing to shop around for sales, you'll do better than sticking with any one store.
But if you're only going to shop at one store, Amazon will be cheapest overall."
When Agency kicked in the answer was:
"The ebooks cost the same everywhere so you might as well go with the safest, biggest store. That is Amazon. Plus their ereaders use Pearl screens, that nobody but Sony has access to for now. iBooks? Those only work on Apple hardware and they still don't have Random House. Shortcovers is now Kobo and they have a cheap ereader at Borders."
After the conspiracy ended:
"Most of the generic epub stores are gone or folding, Nook is in deep trouble, iBooks only work on Apple hardware, and with Borders gone Kobo is invisible to mainstream readers. Oh, and Google is out there somewhere still fighting the Authors Guild."
Of course, there is Agency Part Deux:
"Big 5 books went up 20-30% everywhere. Other Tradpub prices are mostly the same everywhere. Indie prices stayed the same everywhere but a majority of those (1.5Mtitles) are Kindle exclusive because of Kindle Unlimited. If you prefer an epub reader, make friends with Alf so you can convert Kindle books to epub."
There is no price competition between the few remaining stores, just temporary promotions by the publishers.
And Amazon has increased their ebook share from 56% to 80% and more than doubled their print book market share from 19% to 50%.
Agency: the gift that keeps on giving... to Amazon.
In the meantime, interoperable epub in the US commercial market is, if not totally dead, certainly catatonic. Because if the prices are the same, the winner is the biggest player. Especially if the biggest player has the biggest catalog.
The reason collusion and price fixing are illegal is because they raise competitive barriers to newcomers and favor the bigger, *established* players by preventing the smaller players from trying things like discounted bundles, micropay rebates, rolling sales, and lightning sales.
That is exactly what happened.
Agency was the best thing to happen to Amazon and the worst thing to happen to readers.