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.

Comments

Re:Stop yourself

[__aaclcg7560]

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/

Purge? what Purge?

[DrYak]

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)