Quote:
Originally Posted by advocate2
Perhaps my command of English is not what it once was. When a seller says to its distributors "You must sell at this price and nothing lower" it is fixing the price in an anti competitive manor. It is the antithesis of the free market philosophy.
What am I missing that ebooks can be priced above the price of paperbacks? Can it really be true that the marginal cost of an ebook is higher than the marginal cost to the publisher of a paperback?
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The price fixing must be between the publishers. If several publishers got together and decided that all of their ebooks would sell for $16.99 -- none less and none more -- that would be grounds for a price fixing lawsuit.
For a publisher to tell a bookseller that the selling price must be $16.99 for all ebooks, that is not price fixing under U.S. law.
If several of the largest publishers (all is not necessary) tell all retailers that all ebooks must sell for $16.99, even if there is no direct evidence that the publishers sat around a table and came to this agreement, under U.S. law this could (not will, just might) be price fixing.
There are several problems with the price fixing idea under U.S. law.
- Not all ebooks in a particular genre will have the same selling price.
- Not all ebooks will have the same selling price.
- No group of publishers has sat down to establish a minimum sales price (the 70-30 split in the agency model doesn't amount to a minimum price because it fluctuates on a per book basis).
- Gasoline is gasoline, a TV is a TV, but 1 book is not the same as another book, consequently there is no identity of product, which is needed for price fixing -- the commodity must be unique, and not replaceable (i.e., no substitute), which means that ll books would have to be identical in the marketplace.
There are other problems, but this gives you the idea of the problems of price fixing in the U.S.