Also, ebook sales may be flat or dropping at the big publishing houses, mostly because they have raised prices since the
return of agency pricing.
This all changed with the
advent of agency pricing where publishers determined the price of the ebooks, instead of retailers.
The
loss of agency pricing will simply allow best sellers and new releases to come down in price to something more readers will be willing to pay.
Last week saw the declaration by Amazon that the dissolution
of agency pricing in the US was a «big win for customer» and that they look forward to lowering prices on more ebooks in the future.
While no official announcement has been made — that I have found — sources in the know say that Amazon and Simon & Schuster have inked a new deal with puts in place a modified
version of the agency pricing model.According to Publishers Weekly, the new deal will take effect the beginning of next year.
With the
demise of agency pricing eBook prices are returning to the sub - $ 10 range, where Amazon felt they should have stayed in the first place.
That meant e-book prices went up (even though publishers kept telling us the
end of agency pricing meant they would decrease).
This reminds me of how the head of MacMillan — I think that's who it was — back at the start
of the agency pricing debate tried telling everyone that publishers had double charges on editing, cover design and layout, among others, when it comes to e-books and print books.
The terms of service are being amended to reflect the
death of Agency Pricing: «Big Publishers aren't allowed to tell us we can't have a sale, and neither are you.»
«Penguin confirms that it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle claims relating to the
establishment of agency pricing agreements in 2010.
First, ebooks sold better in 2013 by numbers of total sales, but actually resulted in less overall revenue than they have in the past; this may stem from the understanding of where ebook pricing should fall, and the fact that Amazon was able to discount ebooks again after the stripping
away of agency pricing following the DOJ lawsuit against the Big Five publishers.
They postulate that the
removal of agency pricing will give Amazon a monopoly and that Amazon will then implement its evil plan to raise prices.
Instead, the core of the trial is likely to slog through recondite economic arguments and civil evidence issues; part of today's hearing focused on expert witness opinion about the competitive
effects of agency pricing and whether it coincided with Apple's economic self - interest.
The most notorious case of Amazon purposely turning off a publisher's ebook buy buttons happened in January 2010, when the company turned off Macmillan's Kindle buy buttons to protest the publisher's
implementation of agency pricing.
What that means is that, by the time this is over, we might again see a
variation of agency pricing — remember, DoJ didn't say it was inherently bad.
And, in fact, Greenfield points out that Forrester's James McQuivey probably foresaw things a bit more accurately than the «this means war» people when the Department of Justice's legal action against five of the Big then - Six publishers resulted in a
rollback of agency pricing.
This won't hurt Apple much financially, even if successful, but the
legacy of the Agency Pricing move is still damaging Apple and publishers.
The next issue I had with the author's assertion that Amazon is The Big Evil goes to her condemnation for Amazon refusing to sell books from the Big Five (it wasn't six at that point) back at the
beginning of the agency pricing model.
There were still a substantial number of hardcover - priced paperback e-books on Fictionwise even as late as the
imposition of agency pricing in 2010.
Apple counters that the
system of agency pricing it arranged with the publishers is the same as what it uses with all other retailers in iTunes, and that the launch of iBookstore created competition in the marketplace.
Now that all our dinghies are lying lower in the water, «the anecdotal reports I'm getting,» Shatzkin writes, «suggest that the price increases aren't being so easily swallowed in the current
round of Agency pricing.»
In the
shadow of agency pricing and a Federal judge's approval of a settlement between the Department of Justice and some of the defendant publishers, this kind of pricing synergy raises more questions than it otherwise might.
In Justice's broad view of an alleged conspiracy, they also cite earlier plans from 2008 and 2009 to create some kind of alternative ebookselling platform, which is separate from the introduction
of agency pricing alongside the launch of the iPad.
I've written about this more here, but the point is that publishers» adoption
of agency pricing happened as the ebook market was taking off, and was in response to those market changes.
Oh, and don't you love how you can't apply a coupon, which you should be able to apply to any book in the store, to an ebook
because of Agency pricing?