“The Justice Department is hailing a judge’s finding yesterday that Apple and publishers conspired to fix e-book prices as a victory for consumers, who are paying less since the alleged cabal was thwarted,” Marcus Wohlsen reports for Wired. “But readers shouldn’t rest easy. More than anything, Apple’s defeat in court reinforces the key fact of bookselling in the 21st century: Amazon has more power than anyone else to dictate what Americans pay for books. “Amazon could start curbing its storied discounts on books, and no one else — not publishers, not authors, not other booksellers — could do much to stop them.”
Wohlsen reports, “e-book competition could fade much as print book competition already has. Since books are hardly its main business, Apple could weather a face-off with Amazon, which would keep e-book prices down. But that same race to the bottom could sink Barnes & Noble’s effort to stay in the e-book game, leaving its business to rely solely on print — a dubious proposition. If Barnes & Noble does disappear, Amazon would lose the last competitor big enough to exert downward pressure on Amazon’s print book prices.”
“A rise in prices and a drop in sales might just speed the day when the print book become an artifact, a kind of luxury version of literature prized for its beauty as an object but not taken seriously as a vehicle for the everyday business of reading. If that happens, the idea of the book itself could start to fade as a meaningful concept, much as the album in the era of digital music already has. Killing off old media and making way for the new is one thing technology does well. The death throes of the old media are typically viewed with alarm at first, followed by an acceptance of the seeming inevitability of their passing,” Wohlsen reports. “But the book industry isn’t prepared to let go gently. And it’s especially not pleased with the prospect of one company alone wielding the axe.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
U.S. DOJ unwittingly causes further consolidation, strengthens Amazon’s domination of ebook industry – July 11, 2013
Where’s the proof that Apple conspired with publishers on ebook pricing? – July 10, 2013
U.S.A. v. Apple ruling could allow U.S. government to monitor, interfere with future Apple negotiations – July 10, 2013
Judge Denise Cote likely wrote most of her U.S.A. v. Apple ebooks case decision before the trial – July 10, 2013
U.S.A. v. Apple: NY judge rules Apple colluded to fix ebook prices, led illegal conspiracy, violated U.S. antitrust laws – July 10, 2013
I doubt if Judge Cote is losing any sleep over her opinion.
Yes, not losing any sleep, somewhere there’s a reward for her.
So, you’re saying she was paid off?
“It’s the end of the book, as we know it. I feel fine!”
Our DOJ is a bad joke. Holder needs to go.
…to Hell.
Thank you DoJ.
“Amazon could start curbing its storied discounts on books”
But then Apple or any other online company could price less than Amazon.
Doesn’t make sense.
Yeah, I still don’t get the point of this article.
Read this paragraph too. Move your lips if you need to.
“e-book competition could fade much as print book competition already has. Since books are hardly its main business, Apple could weather a face-off with Amazon, which would keep e-book prices down. But that same race to the bottom could sink Barnes & Noble’s effort to stay in the e-book game, leaving its business to rely solely on print — a dubious proposition. If Barnes & Noble does disappear, Amazon would lose the last competitor big enough to exert downward pressure on Amazon’s print book prices.”
Market for books is bigger than Amazon.
Not for long, if Amazon keeps getting the government to help kill off their competition.
pundit – a person who claims to be an expert and markets him or herself as such, but has no discernable income or prior background being a practitioner in the subject matter they purport to represent. These individuals are usually offered talking points and a buried stipend (read: paid off) by a special interest group, such as a political party or industry lobby then go on to blog or make media appearances promoting their point of view to the detriment of people who are real-life practitioners and subject matter experts.
–Urban Dictionary
This article makes no sense-
Is it complaining that hardcopy books as a market is fading? Isn’t that *exactly* what Apple did to the CD market? And if Amazon starts raising prices, other sellers become competitive. Apple, for example, which simply takes a percentage of the selling price, shouldn’t care what the price is as long as their percentage is enough to cover the hosting and delivery costs. Apple is a hardware company, after all. The content is just there so that they sell more hardware. Much like what Amazon is doing with ebooks in order to sell more Kindles.
I think the article argues that the book market is threatened. Writers won’t write if they can’t make a living doing it. Publishers will go bankrupt if they can’t generate enough revenue to cover the expenses and pay writers for their work. And if Amazon’s e-Book market takes over from the physical book market (like iTunes did to the CD), that revenue will drop significantly (if Amazon’s predatory low pricing remains).
“U.S.A. v. Apple verdict could end the book as we know it”
Good to see the art of sensationalism is never going away though..
We need to figure out here how is the current Amazon monopoly damaging, and to whom.
Because Amazon was now vindicated in court (assuming the verdict survives the appeal), it is now in a position to do whatever they want to maximise their profits and growth in this segment. So, what is Amazon most likely to do, and will it be ultimately beneficial or detrimental to the consumer?
Right now, Amazon is holding down the price of e-Books (artificially, oftentimes with a net-loss) in order to grow the e-Book market and sign up Kindle customers with credit cards. By now, the market has grown to eclipse the physical book unit sales in the US, and soon it will likely eclipse it in total revenue as well (e-Books being cheaper than physical books, it still hasn’t happened yet). When the e-Book market becomes overwhelmingly dominant segment of book sales, something is bound to happen. The current physical book business is built around a business model that allows publishers to determine the exact price at which they believe their product will maximise return on investment. Since nobody is getting obscenely rich in the publishing business, we can safely conclude that the business model is reasonably well balanced, allowing book writers to write books and make decent profit on them, publishers to publish those books and sustain their business on it, and consumers to enjoy those books and pay reasonable prices for them. Amazon’s predatory pricing is a very serious threat to this reasonably balanced eco-system. In order to generate similar levels of revenue for the publishers, Amazon’s e-Book marketplace would have to sell almost twice as many e-Books as it did physical books. In other words, the book market would have to become twice as big as it is today, in order to maintain the balance in the publishing eco-system.
With the music industry, this didn’t happen, even though the market size became significantly larger. The comparison isn’t exactly parallel, since the iTunes ecosystem eliminated a major vehicle for revenue, the Album (by offering individual songs for download), which drastically reduced the spending of many music lovers, who could now buy a single song for a $1 instead of the album for $10).
It is difficult to imagine the e-Book market suddenly rapidly growing bigger, only because people can buy books online and read them on their phones.
Therefore, there are only two possible outcomes here: either Amazon will continue holding down the pricing, pushing more and more publishers (and writers) out of business, leaving only the most commercial, lowest-common-denominator (dare I say crap) works standing, or they will ultimately let the pricing be set by the publishers (Apple’s agency model), vindicating Apple’s position all along. The main question is, if and when this happens, will there be any other surviving e-Book competitor to Amazon?
What you and many others fail to understand is that the agency model has been around for years, and it was Amazon that ushered it in with KDP.
What is happening in the publishing industry, and what has happened… the main culprit to what has and continues to affect the big publishers, is SELF-PUBLISHING. This latter has been and continues to be the biggest threat to their existence. It’s caused bankruptcies and mergers, and quite frankly, I’m not that sad about it. Publishers are kinda slimy, sucking massive commissions off of the sales of writers’ books.
The perception that $9.99 is too low for an eBook is subjective.
solution is quite simple. apple can create a totally new market and screw amazon at the same time. they are big enough to publish books, music, term papers, anything. they have the iron in the cloud to do it. just offer to be a surrogate publisher with even better terms that they were offering before and let the authors set the price. the one price model could use some tweaking. as reward for their support. apple should shut down their bookstore and sell their new authors through itunes. the publishers are walking dead now anyway. eddy cue…are you listening. do the blue ocean thing. this whole affair was red ocean. you guys forgot your blue ocean roots.