Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Before agency pricing, there used to be a lot more smaller online eBook stores and they were doing pretty well. Some of them had a really good business model that worked very well such as Fictionwise and BooksOnBoard. I remember back before agency how a lot of MR members bought from these two stores (myself included).
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It's always fascinating how people hold on to this narrative, no matter how many times it's shown to be false. Those smaller online eBook stores mostly either folded or sold themselves to a larger company before agency pricing occurred.
Apple started agency pricing in the Spring of 2010. Most of the small companies that people point to either were already out of business or had sold themselves. Agency pricing got shutdown by Judge Coe in the Summer of 2013. Amazon had 75% of the ebook market at that point.
Within a couple of years Amazon was back at 95% of the market. Guess what, once Amazon didn't have to worry about other eBook stores, they stopped caring about low prices and signed contracts with the various publishers giving them agency pricing.