DOJ suing Apple over ebooks.

[sabredog]

That would have made Steve Jobs the visiting boss keen to get a cut of the "action"

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by sabredog

That would have made Steve Jobs the visiting boss keen to get a cut of the "action"

And just what did Steve say?

[sabredog]

More info

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/11/29...le-an-analysis

[BuddyBoy]

John Sargent, the CEO of Macmillan's spin on this, and his trotting out of Scott Turow's recent gem, is next to unbelievable:

I hope you will agree with our stance, and with Scott Turow, the president of the Author’s Guild, who stated, “The irony of this bites hard: our government may be on the verge of killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition. This would be tragic for all of us who value books and the culture they support.”

Nice try. What the DOJ is doing is not killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition, they are instead targeting real and existing consumer detrimental price fixing that the publishers justified as a "protection" to save consumers from the potential future risk of detrimental price fixing.

And that's how the DOJ works. It deals with real, existing bogeymen, not potential, maybe, someday bogeymen.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

And just what did Steve say?

[JoHunt]

Originally Posted by BuddyBoy

Nice try. What the DOJ is doing is not killing real competition in order to save the appearance of competition, they are instead targeting real and existing consumer detrimental price fixing that the publishers justified as a "protection" to save consumers from the potential future risk of detrimental price fixing.

And that's how the DOJ works. It deals with real, existing bogeymen, not potential, maybe, someday bogeymen.

It's amazing how they can spin especially considering that Apple just didn't want to compete on a fair playing field with Amazon.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Easily.
Or check Amazon's daily hour-by-hour gold box deals or their Black Friday deals. They can track sales and inventory on a transaction by transaction basis with them newfangled computer gizmos.

All they have to do is track the number of loss leader and number of profit-making sales.

The feds are trying to do the BPHs a favor by getting them to understand that you don't have to make a profit on every single ebook sold and that there is *more* money to be made overall by increasing the *total* volume of product sold.

This requires constant monitoring and frequent price changes. This could annoy customers when they suddenly have to pay $5 more than they would have yesterday. Or didn't save $5 by waiting a day.

[Fbone]

Investors don't like B&N's immediate outlook. The stock lost 10% before giving up just 1.6%. After hours down over 3%.

http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:BKS

[Flub]

Originally Posted by Fbone

This requires constant monitoring and frequent price changes. This could annoy customers when they suddenly have to pay $5 more than they would have yesterday. Or didn't save $5 by waiting a day.

Amazon do this a lot anyway. They spent years honing their systems so it can do exactly that.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by John F

Anyone who bought a big 6 ebook will get a coupon good for $0.49 off their next purchase of a Big 6 ebook.*



* The ebook must have a price of $20.09 or higher at time of checkout. No other coupons/giftcards/promotions be may used in conjuncture with this offer. The purchasers must provide their email, phone, and home address for future marketing/spamming purposes.

You forgot.
Lawyers for both sides rake in $1,000,000

Guess who will win this one?
Lawyers. regardless of the outcome.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Supposing Apple and the publishers lose, I wonder what the penalties will be.

Give every consumer who bought an ebook during this period a brand new $99 ereader of their choice (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc) and make Apple and the publishers pay for it.

[JoHunt]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Give every consumer who bought an ebook during this period a brand new $99 ereader of their choice (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc) and make Apple and the publishers pay for it.

Or alternatively an iPad

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by joehunt

Or alternatively an iPad

With iBooks permanently disabled; and free in-app purchasing restored.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I think you probably mean most BPH insiders agree with him, right? Again... hardly surprising or indicative of much.

Correct.
There is a lot more to the industry than the BPHs and their traditionalist fans.
Most of them (over at Teleread in particular) seem to have to gone to ground to mourn.
Probably going through the seven stages...

[John F]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Amazon is clearly the big winner. Most everyone else in the book industry loses. That's not me. That's industry expert Mike Shatzkin:

LINK

Most industry insiders agree with him. We'll see.

From the article:

... But what about the reader? The reader gets lower prices, cheaper reading. ...

Go DOJ!