[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by leebase

Or...if we open the book to the earlier chapter....

FIRST act of aggression was AMAZON putting the ENTIRE NYT Best Sellers list on sale for $9.99 when the going rate was $25 to $30 for a hard back.

Amazon did this to prop up the sales of their $500 ebook reader.

Publishers did not want $9.99 to become the "new book price". There IS NO REASON books cost $25 to $30 in hard back form. It's simply a cost the market would bear.

Cheaper paper back books cost less, NOT HAVING ANYTHING TO DO WITH REDUCED PRODUCTION COST -- but merely as a way to sell books to people who couldn't afford the hard back book.

The hard back book is the only version sold at first so -- while a book is in it's highest demand form, it's at it's most profitable price.

Amazon was threatening the very heart of the profits of the publishers.

Amazon was SO POWERFUL that individual publishers feared taking them on by themselves. They were ALL angry about the situation.

Without Apple, ebooks would have become time windowed -- just like the paper back version.

Apple got mixed up in this ALREADY ONGOING TUG OF WAR. But Apple certainly did NOT create this problem -- AMAZON DID.

Apple with it's impending iPad device was the very thing the publishers thought could take on Amazon's stranglehold. Apple, didn't intend for one moment to go into the "sell ebooks at a loss" business.

Apple and the publishers had to pay a big fine. But -- there were only EVER going to be 2 possible outcomes. Time window ebooks, or let the publishers set the prices for ebooks...thus Amazon and all sellers became "agents" not "retailers" with respect to ebooks.

You can thank AMAZON for this.

No, I can thanks Apple and the price fix six. They did the illegal collusion. They did not take down Amazon. They took down many independent stores. They basically gave a more business to Amazon. What they did backfired. The Justice Department really screwed things up with the punishment after the trial. It was a slap on the wrist to them and the customer lost big time. In face, we are still losing and probably always will be losing thanks to the shenanigans and how it all played out.

Fictionwise allowed some sale eBooks to be bought and then the price you paid held as credit towards other eBooks. It was a ery good system. I bought a lot of eBooks from Fictionwise. They had a very good business model that works very well. Apple and the price fix six took them town and forced their successful business model to collapse.