Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Macmillan is the seller, not just the producer, of the ebooks, which may have weird legal ramifications.
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I am hoping that someone can get a class action suit going about non-interoperability of DRM schemes. Since it is the publisher selling the ebook, why can't it work on every device? If that does not fly, there is the case of an "agent" going out of business. It seems that the publisher would have to take up the slack and support the orphan ebooks at that point.
Overall, I think the publishers would have been better off not using "agency" but just cutting out the wholesaler and dealing directly with retailers. There have been a couple of blogs about the deal that suggest that this is what the publishers are actually doing.
On the other hand, it is clear that publishers "should" be selling ebooks directly to the public, e.g. as Baen does. The agency model is closest to this, and recognises that some retailers (e.g. B&N, Sony, Amazon, Apple) actually add value by providing a single store front for their customer base.