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Amazon Battles Apple By Arm-Twisting Publishers
bizwriter writes "Apple has upset the e-book pricing cart by agreeing to a so-called agency model, where the publisher sets the price and the seller takes a cut. This goes contrary to the degree of control Amazon likes, so although it apparently gave in to Macmillan back in February, it turns out that Amazon continues twisting arms. The problem publishers face is that Apple has a most-favored-nation clause, so it gets the best deal that the publishers offer. If the publishers give in to Amazon, then they also have to provide the same terms to Apple."
You're really concerned what's going to happen to your ebooks when you're dead? Taking corporate paranoia to the afterlife is a little extreme, no?
Because Apple is the one with the contracts that (potentially) hurt Amazon's business (whereas Barnes and Noble is trying to run the same sort of business as Amazon).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
First they ignore you: ""
Then they ridicule you: "Ho ho - tiny little screen; who'd buy one of these toys?"
Then they fight you: "Crap - we better make our own ebook reader and screw around with pricing to protect ourselves. But we're kinda late and our pricing strategies are reactive and ill thought out"
Then they loose: "Double crap - all our best selling authors are now publishing their own book directly on the Kindle and taking 85% of the revenue rather than the 10% we used to give them. Ingrates!"
Feel free to bookmark this post and come back to it in 5 years time to see how it all came true.....
Rich people are eccentric. Poor people are strange. Me, I'd be happy with odd.
The headline makes it sound like Amazon is doing something bad. But Amazon is twisting publishers' arms to sell their books for less than they would otherwise. Publishers have wanted to charge excessively high prices for their books. And Apple has been trying to lure them by letting them get away with it.
Huh? So Apple basically says "we follow whatever retail model you want, but if you give somebody else a discount, you have to give it to us as well".
How the hell is that strongarming? Of course anybody would always fight for getting a deal that at least matches what competitors get. Those have got to be the weakest demands any company with some market power has ever negotiated.
Doesn't this mean that if you have an ipad, which runs iphone apps, that you will be able to buy from apple, or Amazon or B&N? What am I missing here?
While it doesn't always happen, the company that provides the best prices and best selection to the consumers should be the winner. In music Apple unbundled the album and created a reasonable price point. More music is being sold, but music publishers are making less money. Consumer wins. In publishing the total cost of a book should be authors cut + cost of manufacturing + cost of distribution + marketing costs + profit for publisher + profit to distributer = total cost of book. E-books should dramatically reduce the cost of manufacturing and distribution and if things follow the music model, more books will be sold allowing for a reduction in profit margin due to volume. The consumer wins, if Apple and Amazon can strong arm the publishers not to add savings from manufacturing and distribution to their profit margins.
This particular case is Apple giving the publishers a way to strong-arm Amazon and increase prices for ebooks by 50%. If you want to look at it from the perspective of a consumer, then Apple's entrance to the market isn't very good. The funny thing is that Amazon did the same thing to Apple a few years ago by introducing the agency system to mp3 sales. The difference is that Amazon provided a superior product for the same or a lower price that forced Apple to then improve its own product by removing DRM. This time Apple is forcing Amazon to raise prices, so it's not quite as fun for those of us buying books.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)