Amazon’s Book Monopoly : A Threat to Freedom of Expression?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Ah yes, the standard internet debating tactics. Mock and heckle rather than discuss facts. The legal definition is straight forward and easy to find out. The legal definition is that a monopoly is the ability to control the price or exclude a competitor for the market.

http://business-law.freeadvice.com/b...poly_power.htm

Yes, we have been through all this before. I point out the legal definition, which you then ignore in favor of simply trying to mock or heckle, and then claim that I don't provide pointers or links. It's all very tiresome, but then again, when you don't bother to learn the facts, rhetorical tricks is all you are left with.

Well, I have nothing against discussing facts. Glad to see you finally provided a link to the rulebook you are playing.
Although I'm not picky about links -- unless you are quoting someone else, stating your opinion/definition/what-have-you is sufficient for me.


And according to your link, Amazon will "will probably [not] be considered a monopoly" since it is [not] at 75% market share.

I would skew the results against Amazon by including Indie, but that isn't a "relative market", and no Indiepub competitors have filed suit.
Maybe if they did, Amazon would have a problem -- I think they probably have over 75% (more like mid to high 90s) in the Indiepub market.

...

If we are going by "ability to control the price", Amazon has been successfully bullied by the BWMs into raising the prices, perhaps Amazon should file suit against the BWMs because *they* are a monopoly.
(Already done and it seems the accusation was true. At least, s/monopoly/cartel/g but otherwise the shoe fits.)


"exclude a competitor from the market" -- oh, please, do explain how Amazon has been or even can do that.
I am pretty sure Amazon has several competitors, and they aren't going anywhere (Kobo isn't growing but it isn't going away either; B&N will take a while to die properly, but only because they still haven't broken into the ebook market on sheer incompetence ).

Dr. Drib's granny's dog isn't going to be opening an Amazon competitor anytime soon, but that isn't because of Amazon specifically.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, they had them raised because Baen decided that they wanted to sell their books through Amazon. Nobody forced them to do so.

Of course. Just as the Big 5 publishers can refuse to do business with Amazon. But if it's suicide to not use a particular vendor...as it is with trying to sell books without Amazon...then Amazon has "monopoly powers" -- which it clearly does.

Which is why folks were warning about Amazon's predatory pricing.

Now there is precious little competition left.

I like Amazon as a customer...been a Prime subscriber for years. But I've always thought they were anti-competitive with how they built their ebook business

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by leebase

But I've always thought they were anti-competitive with how they built their ebook business

Care to detail that?
What was anti-competitive? Discounting some ebooks? Offering an ereader that didn't need a PC? Not bowing to the great god epub? Something else?

I've been doing ebooks since before Kindle came out and I saw them do nothing that actually prevented others from competing. Except for Whispernet, they didn't do anything that others weren't also doing. They just did it better.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by leebase

Of course. Just as the Big 5 publishers can refuse to do business with Amazon. But if it's suicide to not use a particular vendor...as it is with trying to sell books without Amazon...then Amazon has "monopoly powers" -- which it clearly does.

Which is why folks were warning about Amazon's predatory pricing.

Now there is precious little competition left.

There is a huge difference between it being "suicide", and it involving "leaving large amounts of money on the table for no good reason".
Amazon doesn't need to be a monopoly in any sense or definition, to be a very worthwhile business partner.

Baen has a reputation for being (heaven forbid) smart. It is smart to engage with a significant vendor, in order to increase net income.


This is the actions of a smart business weighing the odds and deciding that they make more money in partnership with Amazon.
You cannot (well, you could, if you really find it fun to say silly things) liken that to a business determining to go their own way, for better or for worse, and being unable to run a business as a result -- which would be the actual, real, non-imaginary, non-buzzword definition of suicide.


Baen did not raise prices and start selling on Amazon because they felt threatened by Amazon.
They did so because they felt they were leaving good money on the table otherwise -- and if they truly felt partnering with Amazon was an intolerable violation of their beliefs, they would go their own way and still make a good living for themselves...

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, I have nothing against discussing facts. Glad to see you finally provided a link to the rulebook you are playing.
Although I'm not picky about links -- unless you are quoting someone else, stating your opinion/definition/what-have-you is sufficient for me.


And according to your link, Amazon will "will probably [not] be considered a monopoly" since it is [not] at 75% market share.

I would skew the results against Amazon by including Indie, but that isn't a "relative market", and no Indiepub competitors have filed suit.
Maybe if they did, Amazon would have a problem -- I think they probably have over 75% (more like mid to high 90s) in the Indiepub market.

...

If we are going by "ability to control the price", Amazon has been successfully bullied by the BWMs into raising the prices, perhaps Amazon should file suit against the BWMs because *they* are a monopoly.
(Already done and it seems the accusation was true. At least, s/monopoly/cartel/g but otherwise the shoe fits.)


"exclude a competitor from the market" -- oh, please, do explain how Amazon has been or even can do that.
I am pretty sure Amazon has several competitors, and they aren't going anywhere (Kobo isn't growing but it isn't going away either; B&N will take a while to die properly, but only because they still haven't broken into the ebook market on sheer incompetence ).

Dr. Drib's granny's dog isn't going to be opening an Amazon competitor anytime soon, but that isn't because of Amazon specifically.

Ah, that is 65 to 80 percent of the market, depending on the source. My higher math skills tell me that 80 is greater than 75, and those would be the stats that a competent prosecutor would use.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Baen did not raise prices and start selling on Amazon because they felt threatened by Amazon.
They did so because they felt they were leaving good money on the table otherwise

And because some of the money they were leaving on the table "belonged" to their authors.

Publishers are middlemen and their "strategic" decisions impact the livelihood of the authors who trusted them to bring their books to market. Usually negatively. Most of the negative things whiney authors attribute to evil Amazon (c.f., LeGuin, Ursula) are longstanding practices of the corporate publishers or recent reinterpretations of embedded clauses that are only now starting to bite.

Any rational analysis of the evolution of the US ebook market can easily show that the bulk of the damage to the establishment players is self-inflicted. The BPHs and their cronies started toppling dominoes and didn't think things through. Not with the conspiracy, not with their contract practices, and not with their recent price hikes:

http://www.bookbusinessmag.com/post/...costly-ebooks/

Right now it looks like they've traded a 10% decline in the high margin ebook format in return for a 1% boost in their low margin pbook formats. Which boost is due mostly to Amazon aggressively discounting pbooks. And is helping boost Indie book sales. Yeah, that is going to reduce Amazon's marketshare...

What it is doing, however, is reducing their authors incomes. Especially the dreamers who agreed to ebook-only contracts.

Baen took steps to boost author incomes but their bigger competitors up north are actively engaged in reducing them. All in the name of strategy.

[Apache]

I have been buying books published by Baen since they started publishing books. I used to buy them, in hard copy, from book stores. Then I started buying hard cover books online because of the discounts available compared to buying them from a retail outlet. When Baen started publishing eBooks, I started buying them directly from Baen. I still prefer to buy them directly from Baen, even when they are the same price as other online stores such as Amazon. I bought Retief from Baen just the other day. I prefer to support Baen directly as much as I can. But, most people only buy eBooks from the online store of the company that sold them their eReader. Most people find it easier to do so rather than find it in another store and have to download the file, go to the trouble of figuring out how to remove DRM, download Calibre, format shift the books and upload them to their eReader from a computer.
Apache

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Apache

I have been buying books published by Baen since they started publishing books. I used to buy them, in hard copy, from book stores. Then I started buying hard cover books online because of the discounts available compared to buying them from a retail outlet. When Baen started publishing eBooks, I started buying them directly from Baen. I still prefer to buy them directly from Baen, even when they are the same price as other online stores such as Amazon. I bought Retief from Baen just the other day. I prefer to support Baen directly as much as I can. But, most people only buy eBooks from the online store of the company that sold them their eReader. Most people find it easier to do so rather than find it in another store and have to download the file, go to the trouble of figuring out how to remove DRM, download Calibre, format shift the books and upload them to their eReader from a computer.
Apache

yep. Since Baen ebooks predated the Kindle by around 8 years, most of the Baen readers are use to buying and downloading from Baen, plus the SF&F crowd tends to be a bit more tech savy than the norm.

[leebase]

Baen and its authors were happy with $5 per book. In order to sell through Amazon, they not only had to,raise their prices on Amazon, but also on their own website. This their customers has their prices raised on them BECAUSE OF Amazon. Amazon doesn't allow themselves to compete on price. They are big enough and powerful enough to enforce this.

If Bean sold through other stores, and those stores put Baen's books on sale...Amazon would too...YET...Amazon would take its cut from the original price.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by leebase

Baen and its authors were happy with $5 per book.

Cite?



The prices were raised to cover the percentage paid to Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc. and bring them in line with similar titles from other publishers. Baen also increased the royalty to authors at the same time.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by leebase

If Bean sold through other stores, and those stores put Baen's books on sale...Amazon would too...YET...Amazon would take its cut from the original price.

That's just as lame as Apple taking a cut for in-app purchases. Quite pathetic.

[leebase]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

That's just as lame as Apple taking a cut for in-app purchases. Quite pathetic.

It's exactly the same MFN clause that folks here roundly criticized Apple for. But nowhere did Apple claim they would take their cut from the original instead of the discounted price.

Folks here were upset that there wasn't competition based on price due to Apple. Well, there is no competition to Amazon on price either. The difference lay only in who got to set that price.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by leebase

It's exactly the same MFN clause that folks here roundly criticized Apple for. But nowhere did Apple claim they would take their cut from the original instead of the discounted price.

Folks here were upset that there wasn't competition based on price due to Apple. Well, there is no competition to Amazon on price either. The difference lay only in who got to set that price.

No, it is not the same.

Amazon's policy doesn't fix consumer prices: they only fix *their* cut at what they and the publisher *agreed to* in their contract. The publishers (and other retailers) can still sell at any price they want, anywhere else, at any time. All Amazon is saying is "we agreed on a fixed fee and I will charge that fee regardless of the selling price."

Fixing service fees is perfectly legal for everybody. Fixing prices for consumers across retailers is not legal for anybody.

Again: antitrust law exists to protect consumers, not companies.

[rcentros]

Ironic that Amazon's 65%-80% of the eBook market is a "monopoly," whereas Microsoft's 90-some% of the Desktop OS market is not.

I think it depends on whose ox is getting gored.

[fjtorres]

The BAEN situation cannot possibly be clearer:

BAEN sold their ebooks at $5 to the thousands of people who shopped at the online store. Which was fine when ebooks were a hobbyist/enthusiast market.
Once ebooks sold to millions of readers all over, the traffic to their store did not keep up with ebook adoption because the majority of the new ebook shoppers used the stores built into their Nooks, Kobos, and Kindles to buy ebooks instead of going direct to the autbor or publisher websites.

Now, none of these stores are charities or public utilities; they are businesses that charge to distribute product and they are not required to do it for free. Whenever possible (and not forced by a cartel conspiracy) they sit down and negotiate what they will charge for their distribution and promotion services.

BAEN negotiated. They had two options: pay Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Apple, etc a slice of the existing $5 price--thereby cutting their income and that of their authors--or raise prices enough to cover the service fee. That would've been about $1.50, BTW.

Not being stupid businesspeople, BAEN realized that giving their ebooks broader distribution would result in higher ebook sales (the goal of the exercise, of course) and lower pbook sales. So they decided to go to two-tier ebook pricing: one price while the pbook is solely a hardcover and a lower price when the mass market paperback releases, but making sure the ebook is still cheaper than print.

The new prices were thus only in part to offset the ebookstore fees, the rest of the price hike was to make up for reduced pbook sales. And since they knew this would annoy their existing ebook customers, they announced that the higher price at the store would result in higher royalties to the authors. They never said how much of it so it might be a nominal amount or it might be substantial. I haven't seen anybody specify whether it is a 50-50 split or a 90-10 split or what.
Doesn't matter really.
Their old pricing was set back when their ebook sales were meant primarily to boost their print sales. These days ebooks *replace* pbook sales. An adjustment was long expected around here. I remember some of us round these parts wondering how long BAEN could maintain their reader friendly policies once ebooks became mainstream products. Surprisingly, the only changes were the price hike and the bundle sales ending with the release of the print editions.

As far as I'm concerned the latter is the bigger annoyance because I rarely bought their books ala carte, just the bundles and the rare EARC. But where before I popped in once or twice a year to catch up and pre-order up to six months ahead, now I can only pre-order a month or so ahead. Minor annoyance having to drop in every other month and if I should forget...

Realistically, things ebook were very different, last century when they started their ebook store. Change was inevitable.