Apple at it again did not learn from the ebook fiasco

[eschwartz]

Err, no it isn't hard at all... you simply have to do as Apple did and conspire with the vast majority of suppliers.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

No. What hassle are you referring to?

A small etailer can only afford to underprice an Amazon for a short period of time. But just in case the short time is now, I shop around.

The hassle of not ordering directly from your device, if the prices are same across the board. When there is no reason to search for better pricing, convenience becomes paramount.

As to Amazon's pricing, it is not always the cheapest. Amazon may push some best-sellers as loss leaders, but older or less popular title were often at a higher price than many small stores. I know, because I bought a lot of those. Before Apple colluded with the publishers.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

What about these:

http://inkmesh.com/

https://luzme.com/

Yeah, except that the market never recovered to where it was before Apple destroyed it. Take a look at my search for an older title, Rabbit Run:

http://inkmesh.com/ebooks/rabbit-run...bit+run+updike

See who the providers are? Not many small etailers, right?

It's because very few are left after Apple's most favorite nation deal ran them out of business (before you ask how, please reread at my post about hardware above).

I bought the full Rabbit collection, all from small etailers right before Apple stepped in, for between less than $5 and $7 per title.

The same Rabbit Run is now available at a uniform $11.99, generally only from major retailers, with one UK exception, which is at $19.27.

Apple gained over 20% US share, small etailers age gone, consumers got screwed.

'nuff said.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Sonist

The hassle of not ordering directly from your device, if the prices are same across the board. When there is no reason to search for better pricing, convenience becomes paramount.

As to Amazon's pricing, it is not always the cheapest. Amazon may push some best-sellers as loss leaders, but older or less popular title were often at a higher price than many small stores. I know, because I bought a lot of those. Before Apple colluded with the publishers.



Yeah, except that the market never recovered to where it was before Apple destroyed it. Take a look at my search for an older title, Rabbit Run:

http://inkmesh.com/ebooks/rabbit-run...bit+run+updike

See who the providers are? Not many small etailers, right?

It's because very few are left after Apple's most favorite nation deal ran them out of business (before you ask how, please reread at my post about hardware above).

I bought the full Rabbit collection, all from small etailers right before Apple stepped in, for between less than $5 and $7 per title.

The same Rabbit Run is now available at a uniform $11.99, generally only from major retailers, with one UK exception, which is at $19.27.

Apple gained over 20% US share, small etailers age gone, consumers got screwed.

'nuff said.

Given that Amazon controlled the vast majority of the market, I think you mean Amazon's most favored clause. Apple isn't and never was the competition for the small sites, Amazon was. Many of the small sites were bought out or went out of business well before Apple got involved. If you want the consumers to get unscrewed, then you better hope that someone with the resources to hang with Amazon steps up to the plate. Small retailers will never have the resources to do battle with Amazon long term.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Given that Amazon controlled the vast majority of the market, I think you mean Amazon's most favored clause. Apple isn't and never was the competition for the small sites, Amazon was....

I think you are completely misunderstanding the issue, which was not one of market share, but of price fixing.

Amazon had and still has the majority of the ebook market.

But I will repeat, again: Amazon did not deeply discount across the board with the aim of dumping ebooks until it ran its competitors out of business. Amazon deeply discounted a select number of titles, generally those on the bestseller list, while it was often undercut, sometimes significantly, by smaller etailers for less popular titles, such as the Updike books I mentioned.

What Apple did was something completely different: It colluded with the largest publishers to fix a floor for ebook prices. With such a floor, small etailers could not discount bellow what Apple (or, effectively, everyone else) charged for a title. So most of them went out of business.

Apple does not like competing on price. As we see, Apple does not like "freemium," either. So, if Apple wants to enter a market where it has competitors competing on terms it does not deem profitable enough for its model, Apple uses its considerable weight to distort the market and change the terms to ones it likes, so that it can gain the market share it wants.

What Apple does is illegal in most advanced countries, but because there are no criminal penalties against individual officers, Apple considers whatever nominal (relative term) fines its shareholders will end up paying in the future, part of the cost of getting what it wants.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I think you are completely misunderstanding the issue, which was not one of market share, but of price fixing.

Amazon had and still has the majority of the ebook market.

But I will repeat, again: Amazon did not deeply discount across the board with the aim of dumping ebooks until it ran its competitors out of business. Amazon deeply discounted a select number of titles, generally those on the bestseller list, while it was often undercut, sometimes significantly, by smaller etailers for less popular titles, such as the Updike books I mentioned.

What Apple did was something completely different: It colluded with the largest publishers to fix a floor for ebook prices. With such a floor, small etailers could not discount bellow what Apple (or, effectively, everyone else) charged for a title. So most of them went out of business.

Apple does not like competing on price. As we see, Apple does not like "freemium," either. So, if Apple wants to enter a market where it has competitors competing on terms it does not deem profitable enough for its model, Apple uses its considerable weight to distort the market and change the terms to ones it likes, so that it can gain the market share it wants.

What Apple does is illegal in most advanced countries, but because there are no criminal penalties against individual officers, Apple considers whatever nominal (relative term) fines its shareholders will end up paying in the future, part of the cost of getting what it wants.

Apple's story is they did not collude with the publishers, but rather entered into negotiations with each publisher separately. As far as I can tell, then was no actual evidence presented in the trial that Apple did collude with the publishers. The "smoking gun" was an email from Steve Jobs to one of the publishers stating what he thought the price tiers for ebooks should be, a model that was abandoned early in the negotiations. There was a fare amount of evidence that the publishers agreed among themselves that they wanted to set the prices, i.e. agency pricing, but it's unclear if that amounts to price fixing, much less is per se anti-trust as Judge Cote asserted. We will see at some point in the near future what the appeals court says about the matter.

No Apple doesn't play the race to the bottom game. They compete on quality and customer experience rather than price. My impression is that Apple's business model in the ebook field is oriented towards those people who buy occasional best sellers rather than those readers who spend lots of time searching for the best bargain. Their ebook store doesn't appeal to me, but I suspect that I am not a target customer. Apple appears to prefer a tiered pricing structure, similar to the music pricing structure in the iTunes store. To the best of my knowledge, Apple doesn't have a most favored nations clause in place when it sets the prices.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Apple's story is they did not collude with the publishers

And you're sho 'nuff stickin' to it.

[pwalker8]

Sure, given that I haven't seen evidence to the contrary, why would I change my mind? As I said, we will see what the appeals court has to say over the matter.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Sure, given that I haven't seen evidence to the contrary, why would I change my mind? As I said, we will see what the appeals court has to say over the matter.

Right.... Yet the European Commission saw clear evidence and Apple agreed to "never do it again" to avoid the risk of fines.

The DOJ and well over half of the State Attorneys also saw clear evince and after expensive stalling actions, Apple agreed to an almost half a billion settlement, subject to their appeal. Judge Cote appeared to also have seen clear evidence of Apple's wrongdoing.

But they all must be making it up....

BTW, under the US settlement, Apple is precluded from entering in similar anti-competative agreements in a broad range of industries where it is a major player, including music.

I really wish that it was easier to go after individual corporate officers who engage in illegal activities.

As is it now, if the officers manage to pull it off, they get all the glory for having cheated the market and fat bonuses. If they lose, the shareholders get to pay a fine and the officers still get to keep their bonuses.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Sonist

The hassle of not ordering directly from your device, if the prices are same across the board. When there is no reason to search for better pricing, convenience becomes paramount.

Good answer. I rarely buy an eBook, and if I do, it goes into calibre. So I didn't think of that.

Originally Posted by Sonist

The same Rabbit Run is now available at a uniform $11.99, generally only from major retailers, with one UK exception, which is at $19.27.

Your inkmesh link shows incorrect prices and a link to long-gone Borders.

Checking at luzme.com, the U.S. price of the Rabbit Run eBook does vary some.

A used print copy is $3.35 ($4.47 for large print), including shipping, per bookfinder.com, while the cheapest eBook vendors charge $8.99. Plus both the eBook and paper editions are widely available in public libraries. So Random House probably does not sell a whole lot of the eBooks. Some people find the eBook format preferable, and pay for it. Others don't. I don't see where this is a moral or freedom to read issue.

It's absolutely true that there are very few eBook retailers. I don't know for a fact that a new entrant would be allowed to charge less than Amazon. But I do know that if anyone was allowed to undercut Amazon's price, Amazon could and would match it. The price war would go on for as long as the new entrant's venture capital lasted, and no longer.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Right.... Yet the European Commission saw clear evidence and Apple agreed to "never do it again" to avoid the risk of fines.

The DOJ and well over half of the State Attorneys also saw clear evince and after expensive stalling actions, Apple agreed to an almost half a billion settlement, subject to their appeal. Judge Cote appeared to also have seen clear evidence of Apple's wrongdoing.

But they all must be making it up....

BTW, under the US settlement, Apple is precluded from entering in similar anti-competative agreements in a broad range of industries where it is a major player, including music.

I really wish that it was easier to go after individual corporate officers who engage in illegal activities.

As is it now, if the officers manage to pull it off, they get all the glory for having cheated the market and fat bonuses. If they lose, the shareholders get to pay a fine and the officers still get to keep their bonuses.

Sorry, but when judging the validity of class action law suits, one should follow the money. For the most part they are no more than "You have money, we want money". Frankly, that's the point of a lot of such accusations these days. A prosecutor or AG files a suit against a deep pocket company which then settles for some sum of money to make them go away. It's the same business model that keeps patent trolls and various ambulance chases in business. It can be quite lucrative.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I've tried most major streaming services and IMO Pandora has the best algorithm for selecting a playlist based on an artist/song example. The reason why I stopped using Pandora is that their bit rate for stand-alone boxes is limited to 96k even on a premium plan, while mobile tops out at 192k. On decent speakers, the difference between the 320k bitrate common on most other streaming services and Pandora is noticeable.

I used to love MOG, but Beats acquired it and basically ruined it, by removing "artist radio" (which kind of worked like a Pandora station) and screwing up the UI.

I've never been a great fan of Spotify, since their library seems to be clogged up with remixes, often little more than "elevator" versions of the original songs.

Right now I use Google Music, which seems to be the best overall, for my taste at least.

Back on topic, to address the title of this thread, " Apple at it again did not learn from the ebook fiasco": Apple did learn.

They learned that they can completely destroy an existing market by colluding with the content providers, then reduce the initial penalties through appeals and end up paying a nominal fine.

Apple currently has over 20% of the ebook market in the US, so they likely learned that such collusion does work to gain market share and long term profits, while whatever one-time penalties they may be subject to at some point in the future, are simply the cost of doing business.

The only problem I have with Pandora is that extended-play sessions, or stations I play several days in a row end up repeating music.

I haven't had a subscription for a while, but I really enjoyed Beats. The playlists always seemed well put together, and I was introduced to a lot of new music by them.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Yeah, except that the market never recovered to where it was before Apple destroyed it.

To be fair, this is the way the US market has been going for a while.

No more neighborhood hardware stores; everyone goes to Home Depot. No more neighborhood bookstores, everyone goes to BN or orders from Amazon. No more neighborhood tailors and seamstresses, most everyone goes to a big box department store.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Sorry, but when judging the validity of class action law suits, one should follow the money. For the most part they are no more than "You have money, we want money". Frankly, that's the point of a lot of such accusations these days. A prosecutor or AG files a suit against a deep pocket company which then settles for some sum of money to make them go away. It's the same business model that keeps patent trolls and various ambulance chases in business. It can be quite lucrative.

Yes, we are aware you believe a government conviction is proof of innocence...



Loking at the case files, one can draw his own conclusion. That is the point.
Unless you believe, in addition to the government ruling arbitrarily and disreagrding evidence, that the government went the extra mile and forged documents, suborned witnesses, falsified evidence in general...

Certainly *possible*, I grant you that. But it seems rather far-fetched and paranoid.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Sonist

I really wish that it was easier to go after individual corporate officers who engage in illegal activities.

As is it now, if the officers manage to pull it off, they get all the glory for having cheated the market and fat bonuses. If they lose, the shareholders get to pay a fine and the officers still get to keep their bonuses.

Lots of corporate officers have gone to jail in the last decade.

Is it corporate officers in general, or specifically Apples corporate officers you'd like to see ?

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Yes, we are aware you believe a government conviction is proof of innocence...



Loking at the case files, one can draw his own conclusion. That is the point.
Unless you believe, in addition to the government ruling arbitrarily and disreagrding evidence, that the government went the extra mile and forged documents, suborned witnesses, falsified evidence in general...

Certainly *possible*, I grant you that. But it seems rather far-fetched and paranoid.

I guess one could always ask Ex Alaskan Sentor Ted Stevens about such things. He was convicted and lost his senate seat. After the elections, it came out that the prosecutor hid evidence that Stevens was innocent of the accusations.

http://www.npr.org/2012/03/15/148687...d-stevens-case

Given that there have been quite a few high profile, white collar crimes that have been over turned on appeal, I certainly feel justified in not considering such a conviction as absolute proof of guilt while the case is under appeal. That's why we have an appeals system, you know.