Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Yes and Net on drugs in Pharmacies. The last two legal Supplier controls of retail price in the UK. Not sure when in Ireland. But this is a different agreement, it's international and implemented by Amazon, Apple, Google and others for ebooks and apps. It's nothing to do with the old Net Book law (originally suppliers could set retail price of nearly anything).
I agree, it should be stopped. Electronic formats sold via the Internet should not have a magically different status. The clue is the percentage paid by the retailers of the retail price to the supplier. That's wrong. The supplier should get 100% of whatever price they set to the retailer and then it's up to the retailer to set the retail price and thus their margin.
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Implemented *on* Amazon. Against their stated preferences.
http://publishingtrendsetter.com/ind...-agency-model/
-Amazon didn't want to give up the ability to discount ebooks as a promotion tool. They used about half the hardcover price for ebooks.
- Apple didn't want to compete on price so they wanted a 30/70 split and a standard price range for *all* books. Everywhere.
- The big publishers wanted somebody, anybody, to compete with Amazon and keep them from getting too big. So, even though 70% of the Apple prices was less than they got from Amazon, they agreed with Apple's terms and collarated in all demanding the exact same terms from Apple.
- Of course, multiple suppliers coordinating to charge the exact same price for the exact same product is, ahem, price fixing. And illegal in most places (except for Germany and France, where books are "special"). The US Department of Justice doesn't share that opinion. Neither did the judge who heard the case.
- Agency by itself isn't illegal; the crime was the collusion. So the publishers were required to negotiate independently. By then, Amazon had discovered Agency worked fine for them (see below) so they "grudgingly" agreed to give the big publishers price control, in return for a bigger cut on books above a certain price (rumored to be $12).
The reason Amazon didn't fight hard against Agency Part Deux, is that during the collusion days, their market share grew by a third, and many of their competitors fell by the wayside. And the big publishers who had provided 60% of Amazon's ebooks had dropped to 40%. At last report, they were around 25%. Amazon aren't selling less ebooks, though. The BPH's lost market share is going to smaller traditional publishers, micro presses, and Independent author/publishers. And Amazon's publishing subsidiary.
The reason being that in the wholesale pricing days, Amazon charged Indies 50% of list to carry the books on Kindle but once they heard of the collusion 30/70 split, they switched KDP to a 30% fee. With BPH book prices going up and Indie distribution costs going down, Indie prices got very competitive and a lot of readers got used to buying from them.
So the big publishers got control over the price of their ebooks but lost control of the ebook market.
Which is fine by Amazon.
So, when it comes to the VAT drop, Amazon is dropping the price on the books they control and Indie publishers are dropping prices if they feel like it. Traditional publishers may or not but they probably won't because they rely heavily on pbook sales and those are down because of the crisis and aren't going back up soon. And those glass tower offices aren't cheap, whether in Manhattan or London.
It's not safe to hold your breath expecting prices to go down other than APub titles. If some do come down, enjoy it.