DOJ suing Apple over ebooks.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Translation: I don't see any quality self-published nonfiction and history writing right now, so it's never going to happen. Today's writers are too lazy and/or too greedy to do it without the amazing support of the big publishers.

And it's not true anyway. There's a huge amount of non-fiction, particularly local history, published by niche publishers or self-published, often by historical societies or local historians and journalists, which is often of excellent quality. The difference over the last few years is that it's getting far easier to reach a wide audience for what would once have been a small local print run, and I expect this trend to continue, broadening into ebooks.

Graham

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Sure you can make an impressive list of quality nonfiction and history writing over the course of centuries. But these days it's coming from the BPHS . It ain't coming Fromm the self publishers.

A lot is coming from academic publishers--who have other sources of revenue, and other goals, besides book publications. Are you saying "only self-publishing counts as truly independent," or do you allow for any publications outside the agency model?

Can you give some standards for "quality nonfiction?" There's no point in coming up with a list of a dozen books, half biography and half other nonfic, if you're going to say "well, I've never heard of that" or "that book is on a subject too obscure to count." Nobody's questioning that the BPHs dominate the publicity of literature; we're just saying that quality writing, fiction and non, exists outside of them.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by stonetools

But the price won't be cheaper. Indeed, even if by some miracle the price is cheaper , what about customer service, Whispersync, cloud services, ability to read on more than one device? DRM is the LEAST of Amazon's advantages.

Whilst DRM remains though the one company that benefits from it the most is Amazon.

I signed up to Kobo the other week because they had some ebooks discounted cheaper than amazon was selling them (non agency obviously). However, had I not known how to "free" the books and convert them to mobi to put on my kindle, I wouldn't have bought been able to buy the books from kobo.

I agree DRM isn't the only issue faced by non Amazon stores and they'll have an uphill battle on their hands to compete with the ecosystem amazon has put together. However, whilst DRM remains, there is no way for those stores to even contemplate competing with Amazon and selling to kindle owners.

In a way that's why I think agency pricing was a bad idea, when price is equal why go with anyone other than amazon who have all the value added services?

Get rid of the DRM though and we'll have a situation closer to music (although not quite the same as there's still 2 formats in play, epub and mobi, but closer than we are now imo). It also means authors have the ability to not put their book on amazon and still potentially sell to kindle owners.

If the big 6 all pulled their books from Amazon and sold via stores with more acceptable terms, as long as the books were DRM free, kindle owners that must have their favourite author would still be able to buy them.

Still, all that said, I think it's immaterial to the DOJ case. If publishers colluded, then it doesn't matter whether it was for the good of the ebook market or not, it's wrong, illegal and they should be held accountable for it.

If in years to come we end up with agency pricing again, fair enough, I'd rather authors be the ones calling the shots and setting their book prices than the publishers though. But, as long as they change their models legally, that's fine.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Still, all that said, I think it's immaterial to the DOJ case. If publishers colluded, then it doesn't matter whether it was for the good of the ebook market or not, it's wrong, illegal and they should be held accountable for it.

It does matter whether it was for the good of the ebook market; if they can prove (or show reasonable evidence to support) that they were preventing a collapse of the industry, or that Amazon was going to jack prices up to $18/book as soon as they'd driven BN.com and Diesel out of business, they'd have a potential excuse for raising prices for consumers.

If they can show a *benefit* for the public at large, even at the price of an extra $3-5 per book for a lot of buyers, they might get away with it. If they could show that three of them were about to go bankrupt without agency pricing, and of course the public would be poorer if three major publishers collapsed, maybe that'd be enough to excuse the price hike.

However, "convince the public that they should pay more" is not a valid reason for collusion, especially when the public statements kept saying "it's not about our profits; it's about people not paying enough, because then they don't value all our hard work."

Businesses are not allowed to break laws to get people to "value their work." And if the problem was "Amazon was dominating the industry! We needed to stop them!" the solution was simple... stop selling to Amazon, and support other retailers.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Of the current top 10 selling eBooks on Amazon, 9 are less than $10....

It's a bit more mixed than that.

The "Fifty Shades" books are $10 a pop, and take up 3 of the top 10 slots. All three are agency priced.

There are many books priced cheaper than what's in the top 10 or top 20 that aren't outselling Grisham ($13) or James Patterson ($13).

Not all publishers are on the agency model. As far as I'm aware, though, the agency priced publishers did not see their revenues tank in 2010 or 2011, and overall ebook revenues increased significantly in both 2010 and 2011.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It does matter whether it was for the good of the ebook market; if they can prove (or show reasonable evidence to support) that they were preventing a collapse of the industry, or that Amazon was going to jack prices up to $18/book as soon as they'd driven BN.com and Diesel out of business, they'd have a potential excuse for raising prices for consumers.

Are you sure on that? Whilst I'm certainly not a lawyer and don't play one on TV, from what I've read, the reason behind price fixing doesn't matter. Whether prices are increased or lowered for a good reason or not.

Not the most reliable source I'll concede, but I had a quick google and turned up
this on wikipedia:

In the United States, agreements to fix, raise, lower, stabilize, or otherwise set a price are illegal per se.[7] It does not matter if the price agreed upon is reasonable or for a good or altruistic cause or if the agreement is unspoken and tacit.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Get rid of the DRM though and we'll have a situation closer to music (although not quite the same as there's still 2 formats in play, epub and mobi, but closer than we are now imo). It also means authors have the ability to not put their book on amazon and still potentially sell to kindle owners.

Yeah, that's worked out real well for musicians.

Musicians still have up-front costs for recordings, such as studio time and engineers. Sure you can record in your parents' basement on your Macbook and fumble through the mastering process, but the people who actually have good equipment and actually know what they're doing will charge more than most musicians can afford on their own.

Meanwhile, recording sales were in free-fall for years, which shifted the musicians' income sources away from recordings and onto live performances and advertisements. Book authors don't have an equivalent alternative source of income.

Authors have equivalent issues, in that hiring a high-quality editor is expensive. At the moment, many of the best editors are still working for publishers, so they won't be accessible to unattached authors. Freelance editing is also not exactly a gold-mine, afaik.

It's not a complete disaster -- musicians are still making recorded music. But the music industry hasn't disintermediated, the record companies are consolidating, digital music sales are monopolized by Apple, and musicians are making less money than before.

Originally Posted by JoeD

If the big 6 all pulled their books from Amazon and sold via stores with more acceptable terms, as long as the books were DRM free, kindle owners that must have their favourite author would still be able to buy them.

The publishers can't possibly afford to do that.

They would lose far too much in sales, and Amazon would certainly blame the publishers for it. It would be an economic and PR nightmare.

In theory they could pressure Amazon into removing DRM. In practice, I expect Amazon will fight tooth and nail against that, to maintain vendor lock-in.

Even if you could buy a mainstream DRM-free book from another vendor, Amazon will have a huge advantage with its customers via Whispernet and instant delivery. There is no indication the DoJ is going to try to regulate vendor lock-ins, so Amazon would still maintain significant advantages over 3rd parties who were able to provide mobi, azw or get some type of access to the Kindle platform.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

However, "convince the public that they should pay more" is not a valid reason for collusion....

True. But it is a valid argument for setting final or near-final prices at retail, which is legal in the US.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And if the problem was "Amazon was dominating the industry! We needed to stop them!" the solution was simple... stop selling to Amazon, and support other retailers.

Again, that's not an option.

The NY Times had an article today about how a small publisher decided not to work with Amazon due to their policies:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/bu...pagewanted=all

One little tid-bit is that in order to stop doing business with Amazon, the Educational Development Corporation also had to stop doing business with Baker & Taylor, which is a major book distributor. Thus this will force other bookstores to find a new way to order those books, presumably directly from the publisher.

These kind of maneuvers aren't an option for big pubs. As I mentioned above, Amazon would have a field day blaming the publishers for denying Amazon customers access to their books, and publishers would lose sales. It'd be an unmitigated disaster.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Yeah, that's worked out real well for musicians.

yeah, there's no single solution, however DRM is imo causing authors more problems than it's solving. My point of comparison with music wasn't so much how well they are or are not doing, more that I can buy an mp3 or aac file from any store I want and load it onto my iPhone, mp3 player etc I'm not tied to Apple and I don't recall ever buying music from them since other stores sell higher bitrate and can on some tracks be cheaper. With ebooks, I have a kindle and if I don't want to free the book the only store I can buy DRM'd content from is Amazon.

Even if you could buy a mainstream DRM-free book from another vendor, Amazon will have a huge advantage with its customers via Whispernet and instant delivery.

Yep, they're going to have an uphill battle, I don't dispute that at all. Amazon has ticked pretty much all the boxes when it comes to provide a good service to customers, it's going to be hard for any store to beat that.

In theory they could pressure Amazon into removing DRM. In practice, I expect Amazon will fight tooth and nail against that, to maintain vendor lock-in.

I agree. However, it would be bad PR for amazon if publishers said we sell our books DRM free everywhere except for Amazon because Amazon insist on it.

For example, the recent Pottermore release, amazon was keen to point out it was at Pottermore's request.

[stonetools]

These kind of maneuvers aren't an option for big pubs. As I mentioned above, Amazon would have a field day blaming the publishers for denying Amazon customers access to their books, and publishers would lose sales. It'd be an unmitigated disaster.

While I agree with virtually everything you say, there is a kind of "akido move" publishers could pull. They could propose terms unacceptable to Amazon, have Amazon pull the BUY buttons, and place the blame squarely on Amazon. The precedent for this is Macmillan vs Amazon in February 2010. It does take a big pair of balls, but it can work.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JoeD

Are you sure on that? Whilst I'm certainly not a lawyer and don't play one on TV, from what I've read, the reason behind price fixing doesn't matter. Whether prices are increased or lowered for a good reason or not.

Not the most reliable source I'll concede, but I had a quick google and turned up
this on wikipedia:

I am not sure at all. I could understand a legal argument of "we HAD to raise prices to protect the industry." Basically, a "self-defense" argument... "we didn't really raise prices; it just looks that way. We protected The American Public by shifting funds from one area of the industry to another."

I am in no way saying this is a reasonable argument, or one likely to pass even basic fact-checking and common-sense inspection, just that I could see the *concept* of this argument being brought up.

But even if that were a valid potential argument, they'd have to explain why they had to raise prices *this* way, and why all of them had to raise prices to the same levels, and how Amazon was going to "destroy the publishing industry," despite bringing a whole lot of publishing value to authors and readers that the BPHs seems not to care about.

I really am looking forward to the doublespeak that Apple, Macm and Penguin will use in their briefs.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Rob Lister

I'll be interested in seeing the complaint. I still don't get how Apple -- who is not a book publisher -- can be held responsible for decisions the publishers make. Inciting price fixing? Yelling "Lowest Price" in a crowded movie theater? I'm not sure this lawsuit is going to have much meat.

Apple isn't a publisher, but they're the ones who initially offered Agency pricing to the publishers. I guess it could be argued that they colluded with the publishers over Agency pricing

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tompe

I assume you know that most books do not sell in great volumes. And that books are not fungibles. So what that model seem to do is move all the risk to the writer and do not help by taking the risk together with the writer. It also seems to be a system that will not take chances and help to develop new authors skills.

Different people (in different countries) experience different realities.

Me, I just reported some basic facts in reply to a question.
Interpret the facts as you will.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do you honestly think without DRM, we won't be buying eBooks?

I said no such thing.
Read my statement again.
I said *libraries*.

I'm no friend of DRM but the term doesnt make me foam at the mouth every time I hear it.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I said no such thing.
Read my statement again.
I said *libraries*.

I'm no friend of DRM but the term doesnt make me foam at the mouth every time I hear it.

Libraries and rentals is one of the few cases where DRM makes a lot of sense imo. For purchases though, I don't think it's doing any favours to publishers, authors or customers. Retailers that have vendor lock-in, they benefit.