Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Will Change Its Ebook Contracts With Publishers as EU Ends Antitrust Probe (theverge.com)
The EU has reached an agreement with Amazon following an antitrust investigation into the company's ebook business. From a report: In 2015, the European Commission began a probe into the licensing deals Amazon was making with publishers, suggesting that the US giant was forcing them into unfair contracts that stifled competition in Europe's 1 billion Euro ($1.09 billion) ebook market. In January, Amazon suggested a number of changes it would make to its contracts, and the EU now says it's happy to accept them, bringing a close to the investigation. The parts of the contract the EU objected to were a number of "most-favored-nation" clauses. These required any publishers doing a deal with Amazon to reveal the terms of the contracts they made with rival distributers. Amazon could then demand that it got the same deal (or better) on things like ebook prices, agency commissions, promotion campaigns, and release dates.
charging more for the Ebook than you do for the paperback! I feel like I'm personally financing Blue Origin!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Bytes are expensive!
Comment starts with subject line. Learn and enjoy
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Shit! Back up ya ebooks! Lock 'em up tight!
I keep around a no-buy list. There are the likes of Microsoft, Sony, Nestle. Amazon is there too, not far from the top.
Soo.. they say Amazon stifled competition.. but the parts of their contracts that they objected to were the "show us your other deals and give us the same deal" clauses that keeps prices consistent across retailers and prevents publishers from making sweetheart deals like they did with Apple. I don't see how that stifle's competition, per se.
Despite being the world's largest marketplace, I get most of ebook sales through Smashwords and not Amazon. I doubt whatever changes Amazon had to make for Europe will trickle down to my bottom line.
Your comment starts with "charging more for the Ebook than you do for the paperback!" and that makes no sense.
Under the wholesale model, Amazon charged $9.99 for most ebook titles to take market share away from other ebook retailers. Apple forced the industry to adopt the agency model that let publishers — not retailers — to set the ebook price. What some traditional publishers have done was to keep ebooks prices higher than paperbacks or hardbacks to protect their print business.
http://publishingtrendsetter.com/industryinsight/simple-explanation-agency-model/
What is this 'DRM' thingy you seem to be afraid of ?
(Note: I legally obtain the book I'm DeDRM-ing.
I'm just removing the DRM because I'm fed up with the Adobe Digital Edition fucking things up on a regular basis and access to my book getting b0rked yet again.
This kind of De-DRM-ing is actually tolerated in my local jurisdiction - as it should be everywhere)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The issue is that print doesn't cost a lot more money. You'd think that warehousing, printing, etc., would add a ton to the price of a book, but the system has been so optimized that the real cost of printing (+warehousing, stocking and shipping) adds about $1 to the retail price of a book. Even less on the cheaper editions. If you wondered why books are never returned to the publishers (or why some books have that "If you bought this book without its cover, it's illegal" text), that's a reason why - by not having to deal with returns, but having retailers ship just the covers o unsold copies back lets them do returns without really doing returns. (The book industry is such that there are rarely post-retail lives for books - if it doesn't sell at the retailer, moving it to another retailer doesn't generally work).
A lot of the price is in markups - retailers often get books for 40% off retail, which is why they can often offer up to 40% off the book . Then there are publisher markups, etc. The rest of it is costs - editors, typesetters, artists, and a bunch of other people who massage an author's manuscript into something that can be mass produced.
In the end, the real cost of printing a book is so tiny that for all intents and purposes, they cost the same0
You'd think that warehousing [...]
According to my college English instructor in the early 1990's, the Reagan Administration raised taxes on warehouses in general and book warehouses in particular. Publisher used to print one million books, warehouse them and sell them as needed. After the warehouse tax went into effect, it was no longer viable for publishers to store books for years at a time. If a bookstore sends back books that don't sell, it's cheaper for the publisher to pulp them. It's one of the reasons why print books have a short shelf lifespan.
OTOH, I've read that the so-called warehouse tax was a story created by the teacher union to discredit the Reagan Administration.
According to my college English instructor in the early 1990's, the Reagan Administration raised taxes
Your college English instructor didn't know the Reagan Administration ended in January 1989?
Your college English instructor didn't know the Reagan Administration ended in January 1989?
You're aware that the Reagan tax reform with "revenue enhancements" took place in 1986? My instructor didn't tell me the story until I was in college in the early 1990's.