2 of 3 Judges appear to favor Apple in ebook appeal

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

When you have 0-10 percent of the market, it's pretty hard to have much of an effect. As was pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the small ebookstores _weren't_ doing fairly well, they were scrambling for funding. The number one reason that small businesses fail is that they are under funded and don't have the capital to survive when the big boys enter the market.

Does not explain why they all failed at more or less the same time, after, according to your facts below, a nice 4-10 years of keeping afloat.

And it all hinges on your assumption that they weren't doing fairly well, which you falsely attribute to someone else in an attempt to fool us into ascribing more believability to you.

And FYI, scrambling for funding can be reinterpreted as, doing fairly well but planning to ramp up operations.

Here is the basic timeline of the various ebook stores.

fictionwise started in 2000, about the same time that baen books started doing ebooks
Diesel ebooks started around 2004.
BooksOnBoard started in 2006.
Kindle came out in November, 2007
B&N bought Fictionwise in March, 2009
The Nook was announced in Oct, 2009 and opened up in Nov, 2009.
The Apple ebook store was announced in January of 2010 and released in April, 2010.

In the case of the small ebook stores, the biggest issue that most of them had was it was too cumbersome for the average customer (i.e. one who is not computer savy) to get the ebooks from the store onto their reading device. That was possibly the biggest advantage that Amazon has with the kindle.

They catered to niche readers, like the ones here. Readers who overwhelmingly supported them.

The most likely explanation is that the small ebook stores that started before the Kindle and Amazon ebook store, had a business plan that allowed them to survive as a little fish in a little pond, but didn't have the resources to maintain their customer base once Amazon, B&N and Apple entered the market. Ebooks went from a niche market, to a major market. It doesn't require a conspiracy theory to explain something that happens all the time.

Which doesn't explain why they contentedly earned money through Amazon and B&N's entrance. And then went belly-up as soon as Apple entered.

When my local SF&Mystery bookstore went belly up after Barnes and Noble hit town, I didn't assume that B&N conspired to drive him out of business. I knew that as a small business owner, he was just getting by on a very narrow margin and simply couldn't compete with the economic scale that B&N had.

That does not mean every single small business which fails fails because of that reason. Else there would be no such thing as small businesses.
Must be, that small businesses can usually get by on niche appeal and a small percentage of the market.
But only when they can provide incentive. Which Agency disabled.
Which would be fair and aboveboard, and the nature of the beast/free market economy, except that Agency only happened due to the impetus of a conspiracy.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then please explain how as soon as agency started, that Fictionwise had to stop their business model that had served them well before agency?

Please explain to me how you know with such certainty that Fictionwise's model was changed as a result of agency as opposed to another bad decision by B&N?

For all I know, and if you are honest, for all you know, B&N bought Fictionwise for the express purpose of putting it out of business and moving its customers to B&N. For a history of bad B&N decisions, need we look any further than the Nook? Why do you think that B&N would suddenly make a smart decision when it came to Fictionwise?

As I recall, when B&N bought Fictionwise you began proclaiming its death at the hands of B&N -- long before agency.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

They did fix prices. They fixed them so no sales and discounts were allowed. They fixed them so they went up. They colluded to fix prices. They drove some smaller eBook shops out of business because they way they were no longer allowed to do business the way they were before agency.

Agency didn't stop discounting; it set a floor for discounting. eBooks still had suggested retail prices that were much higher than the floor (agency) price. A retailer could choose to discount an ebook any amount it wanted as long as the final price was not less than the agency price. Retailers were NOT required to sell an ebook at the agency price.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

When prices are all the same the only thing to compete on is customer service, and Amazon is better than all the rest there. Agency gave Amazon a big advantage.

So it is your conclusion that Fictionwise, Books on Board, and anyone else who went out of business after agency went out because they had lousy customer service. Even you would agree, I assume, that agency did not cause lousy customer service.

What I glean from your statement is that you only bought from Fictionwise or BoB or whomever because you could save 10 cents. Once you couldn't save 10 cents you abandoned them because they weren't worth doing business with as their customer service was terrible.

Bottom line is that Fictionwise and BoB couldn't compete because they had nothing going for them that would promote customer loyalty.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Apple struck a blow to the business strategy of small bookstores. Amazon and B&N did not.

....

The small ebookstores were doing fairly well until agency, then suddenly they all failed at more or less the same time.

Sure Amazon and B&N struck blows. Every time Amazon sold a book at a loss or added another benefit to its Prime program it struck a blow. Fictionwise sold out to B&N because it saw the handwriting on the wall -- it couldn't compete in the long-term, and they realized this before agency. BoB was always an iffy proposition. It would run big sales in hopes of gaining new loyal customers but the customers didn't stay; they only came for sales that were not sustainable.

The idea that the small ebookstores were doing "fairly well until agency" is an unsupported conclusion. eBookstores came and went frequently and BoB was known to be struggling and was the subject of threads here on MR to that effect.

More importantly, any business that can only sustain itself as long as there is no deviation from its original business plan is a business doomed from the start.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Fictionwise had good customer service. So did BooksOnBoard. I cannot speak about Diesel's customer service as I never had a reason to use it.

Interesting. My experience with Fictionwise's customer service was that it was even worse than B&N's, which was and remains less than stellar. I never found BoB or Diesel compelling enough to buy from them. The books I was interested in were always cheaper elsewhere.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You totally got it all wrong. Apple and the price fix 6 thought that when the price differences between Amazon and all other eBook shop was equalized, that customers would shop at other stores. That didn't happen. That just kept Kindle owners shopping at Amazon.

When Fictionwise was in full swing before agency, there were lots of threads about Fictionwise. Lots of MR users shopped there. I know I did.

Apple's entry into the eBook market would not have cause these little shops to fold if if wasn't for agency. Agency caused the little stores to have to stop the discounts, sales, rewards, buyers clubs and so forth.

What was meant to hurt Amazon helped Amazon. It hurt the little guys instead of Amazon. It backfired big time and Apple and the price fix 6 should be punished for causing good stores to go under.

I'm sorry you are blind to the facts. The facts are, that these store were competitive with Amazon and people shopped there. After they stopped being competitive (BECAUSE OF AGENCY), people had no reason to go there so they shopped elsewhere.

How can you not get it? How can you see things that don't exist? You remind me of the conspiracy theorists who think the moon landing was fake and that 9/11 was masterminded by the US government.

Let's see, Amazon's share went from 90 percent to 60 percent, but that means that Amazon was "helped". Fictionwise was sold in 2009 to B&N. Books on Board was scrambling for funding from venture capitalist in 2009. Diesal was planning to switch to a social ebook business. It seems to me that you are the one who is ignoring any facts that disagree with your narrative. I will point out that your narrative is based on a suit that some lawyer is peddling trying to extract some money first from Amazon (he failed) and now Apple and the publishers.

I don't think that I'm the one who is blind to facts. You have a narrative and you keep chanting the narrative like a mantra in the face of any fact that doesn't agree with that narrative.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Does not explain why they all failed at more or less the same time, after, according to your facts below, a nice 4-10 years of keeping afloat.

And it all hinges on your assumption that they weren't doing fairly well, which you falsely attribute to someone else in an attempt to fool us into ascribing more believability to you.

And FYI, scrambling for funding can be reinterpreted as, doing fairly well but planning to ramp up operations.



They catered to niche readers, like the ones here. Readers who overwhelmingly supported them.



Which doesn't explain why they contentedly earned money through Amazon and B&N's entrance. And then went belly-up as soon as Apple entered.



That does not mean every single small business which fails fails because of that reason. Else there would be no such thing as small businesses.
Must be, that small businesses can usually get by on niche appeal and a small percentage of the market.
But only when they can provide incentive. Which Agency disabled.
Which would be fair and aboveboard, and the nature of the beast/free market economy, except that Agency only happened due to the impetus of a conspiracy.

But the problem is they didn't all fail when Apple entered the market nor did they all fail at the same time. Booksonboard stopped selling ebooks in April of 2013. Diesel ebooks closed in March of 2014, almost a year later. Fictionwise was sold in 2009, then finally closed in November of 2012. Apple entered the ebook business in the spring of 2010. It takes a very flexible definition of "at the same time" to say that events spread out over a 5 year period were all "at the same time". The first was sold before Apple even started talking about entering the ebook business. The next closed some two years after Apple opened up. The last occurred four years after Apple entered the ebook business.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Agency didn't stop discounting; it set a floor for discounting.

Right. And that floor was set ABOVE the price that the smaller shops' loyalty programs and discount coupons were routinely providing customers before Agency. So no, agency didn't stop discounting. It just stopped the level of discounting that smaller online retailers routinely provided to compete with the larger shops. The distinction you're making is semantic only. Financially, it had the exact same effect as stopping discounting altogether would have (in the case of those smaller retailers).

"You can still discount; we're not monsters after all. We're just not going to let you discount to a degree that allows you to remain relevant. And oh, yea ... can you little guys hang on for eight months or so, 'til we can find the time to negotiate with you?"

When the discounts the members were used to at those smaller retailers ceased to exist, their sales ceased to exist.

Spin it all you like, Agency contributed heavily to the demise of many smaller ebook retailers. If it wasn't THE cause, it was still a big-ass nail in the coffin. Not BECAUSE of agency pricing, but because of how agency pricing was illegally conceived and instituted.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by rhadin

So it is your conclusion that Fictionwise, Books on Board, and anyone else who went out of business after agency went out because they had lousy customer service. Even you would agree, I assume, that agency did not cause lousy customer service.

What I glean from your statement is that you only bought from Fictionwise or BoB or whomever because you could save 10 cents. Once you couldn't save 10 cents you abandoned them because they weren't worth doing business with as their customer service was terrible.

Bottom line is that Fictionwise and BoB couldn't compete because they had nothing going for them that would promote customer loyalty.

I didn't say Fictionwise had lousy customer service, I said Amazon's CS was better. Fictionwise had 40-60% off coupons regularly, so I was saving much more than 10 cents. After agency I bought a lot of Random House books at Fictionwise because they didn't participate in the conspiracy.

All other publishers disappeared from Fictionwise so even if I wanted to pay the ridiculous prices there were no other big publishers books to buy. How long can an ebook store survive if they can't sell books from the big publishers?

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

All other publishers disappeared from Fictionwise so even if I wanted to pay the ridiculous prices there were no other big publishers books to buy. How long can an ebook store survive if they can't sell books from the big publishers?

That is another thing that is troublesome. There was not enough time set aside to truly negotiate. Even the deal with Amazon was rushed, the negotiations with anybody else was on the back burner. Granted, if there wouldn't have been such an extremely short nonnegotiable ultimatum on the table, the outcome of bullying Amazon into agency might not have happened at the terms that Amazon only agreed to as lesser than two evils.

The small bookstores never had a change to negotiate without losing the ability to sell those affected books for a while. There was no such thing as a grace period until everybody had a fair chance to negotiate properly.

[Graham]

I think the period waiting for Agency books to return following negotiation might have been more damaging than the issues surrounding discounting.

We should also remember, though, that it was also about this time that geographic restrictions started to be enforced. I don't know how large a proportion of their sales were overseas, but certainly this impacted my use of sites like Fictionwise from the UK.

Graham

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Sure Amazon and B&N struck blows. Every time Amazon sold a book at a loss or added another benefit to its Prime program it struck a blow. Fictionwise sold out to B&N because it saw the handwriting on the wall -- it couldn't compete in the long-term, and they realized this before agency. BoB was always an iffy proposition. It would run big sales in hopes of gaining new loyal customers but the customers didn't stay; they only came for sales that were not sustainable.

The idea that the small ebookstores were doing "fairly well until agency" is an unsupported conclusion. eBookstores came and went frequently and BoB was known to be struggling and was the subject of threads here on MR to that effect.

More importantly, any business that can only sustain itself as long as there is no deviation from its original business plan is a business doomed from the start.

Fundamentally, in a race to the bottom, the company with the deepest pockets is going to win. unless of course, they decide the game is not worth it. It's fairly obvious that part of Amazon's current strategy is to go after the ebooks as commodities market. Invest heavily in indies and hope that the customers are more concerned with price than specific authors. If you want to read generic books, then the only thing better than all you can read for $100 a year, is the free (i.e. public library and PD books).

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Fundamentally, in a race to the bottom, the company with the deepest pockets is going to win. unless of course, they decide the game is not worth it. It's fairly obvious that part of Amazon's current strategy is to go after the ebooks as commodities market. Invest heavily in indies and hope that the customers are more concerned with price than specific authors. If you want to read generic books, then the only thing better than all you can read for $100 a year, is the free (i.e. public library and PD books).

Oh really? Nice opinion you have there. Keep telling yourself that all indies are generic books and that readers of indies don't care which author they read.

[DiapDealer]

As if anyone would read crap they don't think is very good, simply because the price is right. Funny how some can't conceive that people are actually finding new favorite authors among indies. But if it "fits the narrative" of a "race to the bottom" that some (with clearly more refined artistic sensibilities than the indie-buying plebes) insist is happening, then hey ... spin away.