Apple files appeal

[pwalker8]

Competition and price are not the same thing. Amazon went from over 90% of the market to under 70%. That's pretty much the definition of adding competition. As far as price goes, it depends. The government basically said that if you look at the books that Amazon was selling at cost or at a loss, then then price went up. Apple said that if you look at the ebook prices as a whole, prices either remained steady or went down. So, it depends on which books you were buying. The prices that I paid during that time frame stayed pretty steady. Your mileage may vary.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

So, it depends on which books you were buying. The prices that I paid during that time frame stayed pretty steady. Your mileage may vary.

Surely you should look at the books sold by the defendant publishers? The DOJ showed conclusively that the average price of those rose following the introduction of the agency pricing contracts.

Graham

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Competition and price are not the same thing. Amazon went from over 90% of the market to under 70%. That's pretty much the definition of adding competition. As far as price goes, it depends.

Why does the government want to foster competition? The consumer. Happier voters lead to happier incumbents.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Competition and price are not the same thing. Amazon went from over 90% of the market to under 70%. That's pretty much the definition of adding competition. As far as price goes, it depends. The government basically said that if you look at the books that Amazon was selling at cost or at a loss, then then price went up. Apple said that if you look at the ebook prices as a whole, prices either remained steady or went down. So, it depends on which books you were buying. The prices that I paid during that time frame stayed pretty steady. Your mileage may vary.

I had never purchased any ebooks from Amazon prior to the introduction of agency pricing. However, I fail to see how the introduction of the closed garden retail system of Apple's benefited anyone other than Apple. If you don't own Apple hardware, you can't buy ebooks from them, if you don't own Amazon hardware, you can at least download their app and buy ebooks from them. No other retailers benefited from Apple's entry into the market, in fact, several of them went out of business after agency pricing. Amazon was not the only retailer to engage in loss leaders, and after agency pricing, it was possible to get discounted paper books cheaper through loyalty programs than it was to get the ebook. Apple likes to claim that somehow their entry in the market benefited competition, yet all I see is that they changed the retailing system from Amazon and the 7 dwarfs to Amazon and Apple and the six dwarfs, and the cost of my books went up substantially because I had been taking advantage of sales and loyalty programs.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Graham

Surely you should look at the books sold by the defendant publishers? The DOJ showed conclusively that the average price of those rose following the introduction of the agency pricing contracts.

Graham

Clearly, the altruistic publishers wanted to foster competition with indie publishers and self publishing authors by raising prices so high that it drives the consumers elsewhere.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

Why does the government want to foster competition? The consumer. Happier voters lead to happier incumbents.

This is too idealistic. What about the felt need by approximately half our legislators to cash out on their influence, by becoming lobbyists, after their time is Congress is over? Happier consumers won't help there.

And even if the legislators who originally passed the US antitrust law were more idealistic than those of today -- which is dubious -- antitrust has been shaped by a century of case law created by judges who don't face re-election:

http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/century.pdf

Among American statutes that regulate commerce, the Sherman Act is unequaled in its generality. The Act outlawed “every contract, combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade” and “monopolization” and treated violations as crimes. By these open-ended commands, Congress gave federal judges extraordinary power to draw lines between acceptable cooperation and illegal collusion, between vigorous competition and unlawful monopolization.

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

However, I fail to see how the introduction of the closed garden retail system of Apple's benefited anyone other than Apple.

If Amazon gains too much market power, they will use it to push down the prices paid their suppliers. I think the publishers will then have less ability to accept book proposals and pay advances. By lowering Amazon's market share, agency made it more likely I'll continue to have a great choice in new well-researched and carefully edited history and journalism. This is especially important given the decline of investigate journalism in newspapers.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Graham

Surely you should look at the books sold by the defendant publishers? The DOJ showed conclusively that the average price of those rose following the introduction of the agency pricing contracts.

Graham

No, go back and look at it. The DOJ showed that a subset of books (which they didn't define) increased in price, not that prices increased overall. For me, the average cost of a book from Amazon stayed right around $9-$10 from 2009 until 2012 spread out over roughly 500 books.

Apple started talking to the publishers in late 2009, the iBook store was launched in Spring 2010. The publisher settlement was in the Fall of 2012.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

If Amazon gains too much market power, they will use it to push down the prices paid their suppliers. I think the publishers will then have less ability to accept book proposals and pay advances. By lowering Amazon's market share, agency made it more likely I'll continue to have a great choice in new well-researched and carefully edited history and journalism. This is especially important given the decline of investigate journalism in newspapers.

Taking action in preventing the future perceived (perceived; meaning as of yet uncommitted) anti-competitive actions of company B can in no way be construed as promoting competition by Company A. That dog won't hunt.

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

This is too idealistic.

Idealism? No. Power.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Taking action in preventing the future perceived (perceived; meaning as of yet uncommitted) anti-competitive actions of company B can in no way be construed as promoting competition by Company A. That dog won't hunt.

Gotta agree with that assessment.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

If Amazon gains too much market power, they will use it to push down the prices paid their suppliers. I think the publishers will then have less ability to accept book proposals and pay advances. By lowering Amazon's market share, agency made it more likely I'll continue to have a great choice in new well-researched and carefully edited history and journalism. This is especially important given the decline of investigate journalism in newspapers.

The decline of newspapers is not related to selling a majority of the product to a single retailer, it's because of competition from TV and radio, which can cover highlighted news faster than newspapers (albeit in less depth), internet news portals, and the loss of classified ads to Craigslist and other internet classified ads. Between the decline in subscriptions because of all of the above, and the decline of advertising revenue because of the decline in subscriptions, there's less money to spend on investigative news.

It's funny how you argue that the publishers will have less money to pay for the acquisition of new books because Amazon will be forcing them to sell for less, considering the publishers claim that with agency pricing, they were actually getting less per ebook from Amazon than they were previously getting with the ebook wholesale model. I guess they were planning on making up the reduced revenue with the higher volume they get when they raise prices.

I hope you're not hoping for well-researched and carefully edited history and journalism from Simon & Schuster, after they only sort of recalled the debunked Benghazi expose by Dylan Davies.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

The decline of newspapers is not related to selling a majority of the product to a single retailer, it's because of competition from TV and radio . . .

Sounds right. I didn't mean to imply why newspapers were declining, but just to say that we need well-edited non-fiction all the more because of that.

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

It's funny how you argue that the publishers will have less money to pay for the acquisition of new books because Amazon will be forcing them to sell for less, considering the publishers claim that with agency pricing, they were actually getting less per ebook from Amazon than they were previously getting with the ebook wholesale model.

Rather than doing what would help them in the next quarter or year, the publishers were thinking longer-term about what their industry, and literary life, would be like with a single retailer having most of the market.

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

I hope you're not hoping for well-researched and carefully edited history and journalism from Simon & Schuster, after they only sort of recalled the debunked Benghazi expose by Dylan Davies.

No one claims every big publisher book is good. I recommend reading signed reviews before committing to any of their products, and avoiding most works of political advocacy. But I will say this for Simon & Schuster -- when the editors told the suits that the book should be pulled, it was. As for Amazon, as of tonight, they don't offer it as a Kindle eBook, but only, I believe, because Simon and Schuster won't let them. And the only review on Amazon's sales page, as of Tuesday evening, is a rave:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Embassy-Ho...+Who+Was+There

If you think Simon & Schuster's standards for book-length journalism are too low, how would you compare them to Kindle Direct Publishing?

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Taking action in preventing the future perceived (perceived; meaning as of yet uncommitted) anti-competitive actions of company B can in no way be construed as promoting competition by Company A. That dog won't hunt.

Not in Judge Cote's courtroom. And probably (since most appeals are unsuccessful) not in any US courtroom. I wasn't making an argument about US law, but about what's good for the quality of books -- especially non-fiction, since a shortage of good fiction seems unlikely to me.

All Apple and publishers did was to conspire to do something in the US that it's illegal for them not to do in France and Germany. This doesn't mean France and Germany are right, but it does make me wonder if it is a matter of judgment, not right and wrong.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

All Apple and publishers did was to conspire to do something in the US that it's illegal for them not to do in France and Germany. This doesn't mean France and Germany are right, but it does make me wonder if it is a matter of judgment, not right and wrong.

It always has been a matter of judgment (and law), as far as I know. I don't need either Apple, the Publishers, or Judge Cote to be right or wrong. That never entered into my take on it. Right and wrong are too subjective to be of much use in these matters.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Rather than doing what would help them in the next quarter or year, the publishers were thinking longer-term about what their industry, and literary life, would be like with a single retailer having most of the market.

It's more likely that they were looking at short-term methods to preserve their hardcover profits at the expense of ebook profits. As long as the top 3 ebook retailers (Amazon, Apple and B&N) sell ebooks in a walled garden of DRM where only their hardware (and their Android/IOS apps) can read their respective books, Amazon is never going to lose its natural monopoly because the average consumer won't switch retailers and lose the ability to read their previously purchased ebooks. If everyone only read their ebooks on Android/IOS tablets, there might be more of a chance for Amazon to lose their monopoly, but only if the other retailers either sold books for less or had stores that were substantially easier to use.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

It's more likely that they were looking at short-term methods to preserve their hardcover profits at the expense of ebook profits. As long as the top 3 ebook retailers (Amazon, Apple and B&N) sell ebooks in a walled garden of DRM where only their hardware (and their Android/IOS apps) can read their respective books, Amazon is never going to lose its natural monopoly because the average consumer won't switch retailers and lose the ability to read their previously purchased ebooks. If everyone only read their ebooks on Android/IOS tablets, there might be more of a chance for Amazon to lose their monopoly, but only if the other retailers either sold books for less or had stores that were substantially easier to use.

How does adding another ebook retailer supposed to preserve their hardcover profits?