Pressure Mounting for Judge Cote to Reject E-Book Settlement

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The DoJ should make it that if the BPHs want to go back to agency, that they have to do it one at a time and do it no less then a year a part. Now we know what will happen to the first BPH to do that. They would lose sales big time and if that sort of stipulation was put in place, the agency model would be dead.

Part of the settlement is indeed that the settling publishers would go back to agency one by one. You should remember that Macmillan went against Amazon alone at first and won. Later too Random House.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The agency model would never have worked if just one of the BPHs did it first. The customers would just shop elsewhere. The others would see this and not go agency. So in this case, it did have to be all or nothing and the all is what is illegal.

Customers would not have shopped elsewhere. If Stephen King's novel is agency priced and someone wanted to read it, they would pay the agency price and not think twice about whether the book was agency priced.

The reading and spending habits of individual MR members, as much as we might like to project them to all buyers, are often atypical of the vast majority of bookbuyers. And as much as we often like to disdain what others do, we should not forget that we are a small group in the bookbuying world and even among ourselves do not have uniform habits or beliefs when it comes to agency pricing or Amazon.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The DoJ should make it that if the BPHs want to go back to agency, that they have to do it one at a time and do it no less then a year a part. Now we know what will happen to the first BPH to do that. They would lose sales big time and if that sort of stipulation was put in place, the agency model would be dead.

Either books are fungible or they are not. If authorship doesn't matter and only genre matters, then you are right; if authorship matters more than genre, then you are wrong.

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

True at this very moment, but pbooks are starting to look like Blackberries 2 years ago. You see the tidal wave coming but nobody is running. Everybody says, hey, "look how beautiful it is here on the beach".

Kindle E-Books Now Outselling All Paper Books on Amazon

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

But shouldn't the industry plan for the future? The big publishers' current plan seems to be focused on slowing down ebook acceptance.

Almost every title published in the last few years is available in ebook form. And we have backlist titles appearing also.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Almost every title published in the last few years is available in ebook form. And we have backlist titles appearing also.

And how many make it to libraries?

[crossi]

Books are not completely fungible but unless you are someone who wants to read one book and only that one book next it is quite possible to wait on an overpriced book and read something else while waiting. I have ~450 books on various wishlists. I'd be quite happy to read any one of them and it would take me several years to read all of them. Even if I never re-read any. So it is no hardship to sort the list by price and pick books on the lower quarter for my next bought book. I'll get around to the others, maybe, though my wishlist is growing faster than I'm buying so it might be a long while for the highest priced books.

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And how many make it to libraries?

As many as the library can afford.

[vaughnmr]

Originally Posted by Fbone

As many as the library can afford.

Don't you mean "as many as allowed by the publishers"?

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by Fbone

As many as the library can afford.

My librarian told me they were having issues, because few publishers are releasing current ebooks to the libraries.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Either books are fungible or they are not. If authorship doesn't matter and only genre matters, then you are right; if authorship matters more than genre, then you are wrong.

In some cases, authorship does matter. But in others, it doesn't matter. But I think overall price would win out in the long run.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by vaughnmr

Don't you mean "as many as allowed by the publishers"?

This is what I'm talking about. Ebooks are treated like a threat. They aren't allowed to be available in libraries and it feels like the only reason why the big publishers make ebooks available for purchase is because if they wouldn't agree to sell them the authors would sell them through Amazon.

[BuddyBoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Oh, I agree. But it's important to note that it's the cartel that's illegal, not the price fixing.

I'm curious - how can you price fix without collusion? I mean, if a single publisher sets a price for a book or sets up the agency model, that's not price fixing is it? Isn't it just, well, setting your price?

I thought there had to be an agreement between at least two suppliers before it became price fixing, and that would violate collusion laws. Or am I mistaken?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And how many make it to libraries?

OverDrive currently hosts more than 650,000 premium digital titles from more than 1,000 publishers

Leaving aside the meaningless word "premium" in the sentence above, I presume the claim to be correct.

However, per research by our own Fbone, no one library has more than around 41,000 of these.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by BuddyBoy

I'm curious - how can you price fix without collusion?

Ask the airlines.

You set a higher price, and see if others match it. It they do, you keep the new higher price; otherwise, you fall back.