Author Earnings sheds light on ebook Agency redux

[darryl]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Shh!
Dontcha know they "never admitted wrongdoing"?
That trumps any physical evidence and legal findings.

And don't forget, all but Apple "settled out of court". They weren't convicted. But the one I like best is none of their executives were sent to prison! They must be innocent!

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

The price was so high because Kobo is still Agency pricing. Amazon has it for $11.99. This is what Agency pricing does - higher prices.

Here's the link for Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Grandfather-Wo.../dp/B00NVVU9DI

And Barnes & Noble is US$13.99 for the eBook. And kobo, without a coupon code, is $19.99.

Agency pricing would mean that every legitimate seller in the same country charged the same. This example thus isn't agency pricing, but competitive pricing of a new release. And competition has, in this particular instance, arguably resulted in higher pricing than for comparable titles (look for other short, well-reviewed, memoirs) from agency publishers.

Does retail price maintenance AKA agency pricing mean long-term higher prices for goods of the same or lower quality? I wonder whether anyone really knows.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Shh!
Dontcha know they "never admitted wrongdoing"?
That trumps any physical evidence and legal findings.

So... If I'm convicted of robbing a bank, but never admit the crime, the whole thing doesn't count? Very cool.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by darryl

But the one I like best is none of their executives were sent to prison! They must be innocent!

As a poster who mentioned prison, I will say that, personally, I see no connection between whether anyone went to prison and antitrust innocence. My unprovable claim is that Apple is too big to seriously punish for antitrust. That's due to political and economic factors, not innocence.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

As a poster who mentioned prison, I will say that, personally, I see no connection between whether anyone went to prison and antitrust innocence. My unprovable claim is that Apple is too big to seriously punish for antitrust. That's due to political and economic factors, not innocence.

It isn't anything close to as big as Bell was when they broke them up.
Claim dismissed.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Phogg

It isn't anything close to as big as Bell was when they broke them up.
Claim dismissed.

A couple points here:

-- AT&T top executives were not celebrities. Maybe they had a Nobel prize scientist (did they?), but the CEO was less prominent than Tim Cook.

-- In 1981, AT&T was number 1 in market capitalization, as Apple is today, and by roughly similar margins. But the percentage of the US public who owned stock was less than today. And the percentage of the public who loved AT&T products (and associated them with the company) was small compared to the hoards of Apple fanboys.

-- AT&T's breakup was a settlement offer by the company. And it was a good settlement for them, because the total market value of the pieces turned out to be greater than the whole.

-- Unless Apple wants to break up, I predict the US judiciary will not order it. Do you have a contradictory prediction we should check back on in a couple years?

One problem with punishing people for crime is that it, to a large extent, hurts innocent bystanders. Lock up a burglar, and you devastate his children. But we do that anyway. Lock up Tim Cook, and you hurt a couple million stockholders. That, I predict, we won't do.

[eschwartz]

A couple million stockholders would be hurt by the actions of the company they unwisely put their trust in. I can't see that being a problem.

[darryl]

I don't want to see Apple broken-up. What I want to see is for them to refrain from abusing their enormous market power and comply with Competition Law. It is really up to them whether they want to continue to play fast and loose with the law and risk the consequences. Sadly, I think, as per the title of the thread on these forums, they have so far failed to learn their lesson.

[dickloraine]

Wouldn't sending someone to prison involve an additional trial? With totally different rules? And only if such actions would be punishable on the personal level?

[murg]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

A couple points here:

-- AT&T top executives were not celebrities. Maybe they had a Nobel prize scientist (did they?), but the CEO was less prominent than Tim Cook.

Tim Cook isn't a celebrity. He's a CEO. If he were fired tomorrow, all the Apple fanboys would have an apoplectic fit, but after a day or two, no one would really care. They'd all be speculating about the new guy.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

-- In 1981, AT&T was number 1 in market capitalization, as Apple is today, and by roughly similar margins. But the percentage of the US public who owned stock was less than today. And the percentage of the public who loved AT&T products (and associated them with the company) was small compared to the hoards of Apple fanboys.

Everyone used the Bell System. Well, almost everyone, except for some areas served by General Telephone, like Santa Monica.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

One problem with punishing people for crime is that it, to a large extent, hurts innocent bystanders. Lock up a burglar, and you devastate his children. But we do that anyway. Lock up Tim Cook, and you hurts a couple million stockholders. That, I predict, we won't do.

The whole purpose of punishing a company is to punish the shareholders for not adequately supervising the management. The shareholders do this by electing a board, who is supposed to look after the shareholder's interests.

If a company is behaving badly, the shareholders deserve to be punished for it. Hopefully, it will teach them to be wiser when voting for the board members.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by dickloraine

Wouldn't sending someone to prison involve an additional trial? With totally different rules? And only if such actions would be punishable on the personal level?

https://books.google.com/books?id=yS...an-act&f=false

Section 1 of the Sherman Act does not distinguish between criminal offenses and civil offenses. . . . the practice of the Antitrust Division has been to bring criminal prosecutions only for clear-cut violations of Section 1 . . .

And the Apple conviction was indeed for Section 1:

http://www.lathropgage.com/newsletter-108.html

Judge Cote found that Apple’s participation in the horizontal price-fixing conspiracy between five book publishers constituted a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.

So what do people think? Was it not a clear-cut violation? Or was there favoritism towards a big company with many defenders?

Of course, they didn't charge the publishers with criminal anti-trust either, even though the publishers are much smaller than Apple. Was that an example of favortism towards medium sized companies with many defenders? Or was it another case of the Justice Department going after people who weren't clear-cut violators? Defenders of the US legal system are welcome to inform me which it is.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

https://books.google.com/books?id=yS...an-act&f=false



And the Apple conviction was indeed for Section 1:

http://www.lathropgage.com/newsletter-108.html



So what do people think? Was it not a clear-cut violation? Or was there favoritism towards a big company with many defenders?

Of course, they didn't charge the publishers with criminal anti-trust either, even though the publishers are much smaller than Apple. Was that an example of favortism towards medium sized companies with many defenders? Or was it another case of the Justice Department going after people who weren't clear-cut violators? Defenders of the US legal system are welcome to inform me which it is.

We are still waiting for the 2nd to rule on the appeal. I've already been pretty clear on what my opinion on the matter is (i.e. that the whole case turned anti-trust law on it's head, using anti-trust prosecution to protect a monopolistic company from competition and that Judge Cote ignored the current Supreme Court rulings). We won't know how this turns out until the 2nd issues it's ruling. I have no idea when that will be.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

And Barnes & Noble is US$13.99 for the eBook. And kobo, without a coupon code, is $19.99.

Agency pricing would mean that every legitimate seller in the same country charged the same. This example thus isn't agency pricing, but competitive pricing of a new release. And competition has, in this particular instance, arguably resulted in higher pricing than for comparable titles (look for other short, well-reviewed, memoirs) from agency publishers.

Does retail price maintenance AKA agency pricing mean long-term higher prices for goods of the same or lower quality? I wonder whether anyone really knows.

Back in the 2010-2014 days of agency pricing, I still saw cases of the big 5/6 publishers selling ebooks cheaper at Amazon than at their competitors. I don't know how or why that happened, if it was Amazon-only sales, or maybe the other retailers didn't have flexible enough storefronts to manage the short term sales, and either just didn't bother to do the sale, or didn't have the resources to keep up with the publishers

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Back in the 2010-2014 days of agency pricing, I still saw cases of the big 5/6 publishers selling ebooks cheaper at Amazon than at their competitors. I don't know how or why that happened, if it was Amazon-only sales, or maybe the other retailers didn't have flexible enough storefronts to manage the short term sales, and either just didn't bother to do the sale, or didn't have the resources to keep up with the publishers

Actually agency pricing doesn't preclude different prices at different stores. Agency simply says that the publishers set the price, not the resellers. The various resellers would need to include a most favored nations clause to make sure that the books were not sold for less elsewhere.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Actually agency pricing doesn't preclude different prices at different stores. Agency simply says that the publishers set the price, not the resellers. The various resellers would need to include a most favored nations clause to make sure that the books were not sold for less elsewhere.

Wasn't a "most favored nation" clause part of the reason Apple wanted agency pricing to start with? So that they always had the lowest price regardless of sales elsewhere. I seem to remember something similar for Amazon but can't point to anything specific.