Is agency ebook pricing over?

[Hook]

Thanks, QF, a really nice job of succinctly presenting the issues.

This was so blatantly unfair my dog, who has trouble with remembering "paw" from "down", understands this is illegal.

Calling zippy!

[Varjak]

Bravo Mi An.

Internet Pilot; it's simple. Collusion is illegal. They were price-fixing. Also, publishers can still set the price at which they intend to 'wholesale' the books; but they can't favor one distributor and they can't say that no one can undercut that favored distributor.

I think QF explained it best.

[Mi An]

I keep reading Apple playing the white hat card about breaking up Amazon's 'monopoly'. I had a hell of a lot more choice in those days than I do now AND the choice actually mattered to my pocket book. Now the choice only matters as to which devices/portals you want to be tied to.

And while QF is right, the settlement benefits all retail players, it doesn't help the players Apple killed off so it wouldn't have to compete with Amazon. That's collateral damage I guess.

To be frank, I'm all for companies being soulless profit machines. But if you're going to behave that way while trying to pretend to be a selfless hero, I am going to mock you for it.

[internetpilot]

I'm not being thick, but I still don't see where the illegality is. If I'm a publisher I have the right to sell my product through whatever store I want and even dictate the minimum price (through contracts) that I want my product sold. Every manufacturer has this right and these minimum price contracts are common across most industries today. When manufacturers get together to dictate this as a group it's typically called "industry", ie, the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the automobile industry, the housing industry, the banking industry, etc. Now the government is going to tell publishers where and for how much they can sell their books? Hello, Big Government...can't believe I didn't see that giant pink elephant in the room until just now! That's a slippery slope and should be a heads-up to other (more lucrative) industries.

I hate Apple. Their slimy, victim act and competition-by-lawsuit is just so repulsive to me. But I look at this situation as Apple simply playing the real game (for a change) using hardball competition. Amazon could counter-offer to the publishers to keep Apple down in the market. Amazon is HUGE -- it's not like it was getting bullied out of the market by a few publishers collaborating only with Apple. A complacent Amazon was simply out-maneuvered (in that round) and the DOJ should have stayed out of it.

As for the Mom-n-Pop stores -- is there really such a thing in what's becoming the eBook world? The days of paper bookstores are rapidly dwindling. I'm not going to a Mom-n-Pop book store to buy an eBook. Maybe a rare printed first edition, but that's not the market that Apple, Amazon, or even B&N are fighting for, mostly because that's not what the vast majority of customers are looking for. Heck, my family owns six Nook devices and I can't remember the last time I physically set foot in a B&N store.

Of course, this is all just my opinion on the matter. I haven't received my usual advice-seeking phone calls from the White House or USAG for years now...

[internetpilot]

The movie/video industry has been doing this for years. When Blockbuster and Netflix were at their competition peak, Blockbuster negotiated exclusive contracts with a significant part of the movie industry to exclusively offer movies typically for one month prior to Netflix. Under this same set of collusion laws, how is that legal? That seems to me like a group from the movie industry is favoring Blockbuster over Netflix.

The same thing happens with eBooks. There was a time in the not-so-distant past that plenty of bestsellers were only released on the Kindle (arguably the only mainstream eReader at the time) and wouldn't make it to Fictionwise or other companies for months -- sometimes over a year. Meanwhile, there wasn't even such a thing at the time as the Kindle App, so unless you had an Amazon exclusive hardware eReader, you weren't getting that eBook.

In my opinion, offering a product exclusively to one store could be considered the ultimate collusion, and this happens all the time with a variety of products across virtually all industries.

[Mi An]

I'm not being thick, but I still don't see where the illegality is.

There are multiple conversations going on in this thread. I answered above what was out of the norm, as I wasn't sure by your question that you actually understood sale prices were being dictated, not purchase prices, which is most definitely out of the norm.

If you want to read about illegality, QF will have to help you out. I honestly don't care.

As a result of whatever illegality occurred, the settlement for those 3 publishers means they won't be engaging in agency pricing for at least 2 years, even though agency pricing in and of itself is not illegal (notice the 6th big publisher, Random House I think, who finally started doing agency months after the other 5 and separate from them, isn't named in the suit). This is basically a side issue, but it's the only one I really care about.

If government intrusion is a big concern for you, take solace in the fact that publishing industry is about as chock full of pro-intrusion, pro-regulation progressives (not trying to be insulting, I think they'd ID themselves in those very words) as any industry in the country. This is what they voted for. Actually, it's a very, very non-intrusive version of what they voted for.

[Adama D. Brown]

I'm not being thick, but I still don't see where the illegality is. If I'm a publisher I have the right to sell my product through whatever store I want and even dictate the minimum price (through contracts) that I want my product sold. Every manufacturer has this right and these minimum price contracts are common across most industries today. When manufacturers get together to dictate this as a group it's typically called "industry"

Except that it's a federal crime for companies to directly get together and dictate terms as a group. It's collusion and price fixing, which along with monopolization is banned as anti-competitive business practices. Getting bullied out of the market, because the publishers didn't like the way Amazon was doing business, was exactly the point of the deals they struck. The only way for an "industry" to work together is through a trade organization like the Association of American Publishers, and trade organizations have rules about what they can and cannot do, although even a lot of those groups skirt the law.

[internetpilot]

Except that it's a federal crime for companies to directly get together and dictate terms as a group. It's collusion and price fixing, which along with monopolization is banned as anti-competitive business practices. Getting bullied out of the market, because the publishers didn't like the way Amazon was doing business, was exactly the point of the deals they struck. The only way for an "industry" to work together is through a trade organization like the Association of American Publishers, and trade organizations have rules about what they can and cannot do, although even a lot of those groups skirt the law.

But that's pretty much what every industry does -- come together as a group and dictate prices. Why "pick on" publishers -- why not the dairy industry, oil industry, medical industry, pharmaceutical industry? They all do it.

[internetpilot]

If you want to read about illegality, QF will have to help you out. I honestly don't care.

I actually don't care either. Can I get my new releases from B&N for a price I'm willing to pay? Then I'm fine.

And far be it from me to actually defend the business practices of Apple. Even just for the brief moment I was doing so above, it made my skin crawl all day!

[questionfear]

Internet pilot-its not that they dictate the MSRP. But imagine going to the grocery store and discovering that your local store can no longer offer you a coupon for milk. They can only discount milk if the dairy distributor wants to discount the milk, and then every store, from your local grocer to quick check, will offer the same discount, at the same time, for the same end price, in lock step. Same with eggs, bread, meat, etc.

That is the big issue here. It is that they specifically laid out a plan that banned discounting for the express purposes of harming one retailers growth. And the reason the government went after them was that it was blatantly, painfully obvious.