iLounge

1

So Apple is going with the fingers in the ears “lalalalalallaalalalala can’t hear you!” approach, brilliant.

Let’s see, before the agency model, retailers bought set numbers of copies of digital books just like with physical books, could negotiate higher volume discounts, and, with the publisher paid up front an agreed price, could then compete with other retail distributors by selling the digital copies at whatever price they wanted just as they do with physical books.

After the agency model nobody could negotiate prices, nobody could offer books at any price other than the price set by the publisher, and Amazon, Apple, B&N, et al, become nothing more than DRM managers for a cartel of the six largest book publishers and average prices jumped several dollars a copy for the end user while the content creators got bupkiss.

Yeah, that’s really fostering innovation and competition :rolleyes:

The only innovation and competition has come about via the explosion in indie and small print eBooks that find it easier to exist when they can sell their titles at $3 next to the $13-$15 big six titles and the authors take home several times more on the $3 self/indie print.

Posted by Code Monkey in Midstate New York on April 13, 2012 at 8:45 AM (PST)