“In the mushrooming controversy over e-books, it’s easy to understand the publishers’ motives,” Jeff Roberts writes for paidContent. “But what about Apple? Did the company want to raise book prices in order to protect its iPad and blunt the rise of Amazon?”
“These questions will figure prominently in two regulatory investigations and in the more than two dozen class action suits that have been filed in the US since August,” Roberts writes. “Recall that, according to the accusations, big publishers colluded to impose ‘agency pricing’ on Amazon. This pricing model is a commission scheme that lets publishers control the minimum amount that retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble can charge consumers for e-books.
“The one problem with this grand conspiracy theory is that it overstates the importance of e-books in the larger consumer market… Apple’s business is driven by sales of devices not content. In other words, the e-book market is inconsequential to Apple if you consider that the company’s overall earnings could allow it to buy the entire publishing industry several times over.”
Read more in the full article here.
And how else Apple would be able to sign the publishers, if they were “chained” by Amazon, close to be a monopoly (B&N was far behind)?
As Jobs explained to Isaacson, Apple had to go with agency model because the market was already owned by Amazon. Apple did not want it, but it was the only way.
Clearer than the last statement, impossible. Publisher industry leaders, like those in music and movies industry, are the greedy ones and Apple has no option but make HIS BEST to loosen this tight dominance. It has been doing a good job in music and movies and it’s doing his best in publishing. The problem is hard to solve because the earnings chain is all upside down. The artists, say musicians and writers, are the ones who receive a glass of water in this huge cascade of money flowing.
The creators don’t have to settle for the crumbs that fall off the table if they deal with iBooks Store via a (non-greedy) intermediary like BookBaby, who charge modest fees bt take no commission.
This is the way to change an immovable industry, sideline the bastards by going the Indy route.
Yes, you’re right. In fact, I’m working on my own writing for BabyBook. However, look: This advantage has been available for years in Indy music and I’ve not seen a really big change in the industry yet, such as the one needed to put the intermediaries on their knees. Something is missing… Money for more promotion? What if Steve Jobs’ biography had been published on BabyBook?
What about Amazon’s pre-iBooks “conspiracy” (although I guess it’s not a conspiracy if it’s just them)?
I’m referring to Amazon’s previous set-in-stone pricing for e-books that forced many publishers to sell their books at break-even or a loss. Amazon didn’t care. They wanted cheap e-books to support the new delivery model and figured the publishers could like or lump it — after all, Amazon was pretty much the only viable game in town.
Then Apple comes along and offers publishers a better deal, and that’s a conspiracy?
——RM
Personally, I don’t think this e-reader thing is a curial to Apple’s iPad sales as one would think. I don’t think anybody will be able to prove that Apple was trying to protect the iPad. The device does many things very well, including e-reading. But this is only a feature. Personally, I don’t think anything will come from this.
Curial – having to do with the Papal court at the Vatican
Maybe you meant “crucial”?
I’m confused. Where’s the conspiracy? The pricing model?
Four comments thus far, and not one person seems to understand the “agency” model and how Amazon sold ebooks prior to its implementation. FWIW, the “agency” model forced all ebook sellers to sell them at the same price with the price being set by the various Publishers. It has done nothing to enhance or preserve income earned by writers. It has caused the consumer to pay more. End of story.
Would it not rather worthy, to ask the role of Amazon in the tablet market? They sell the kindle fire under the price of the production, because they want to gain market share, to sell their content. This is not a big threat for Apple, but what about all the competitors without content? Is this not abusing Amazon’s market dominance in content selling? What about an anti-trust complaint against Amazon?