The Apple E-Book Lawsuit and Amazon’s $9.99 Problem
“On April 11, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against Apple and several book publishers, claiming that the companies conspired to limit price competition in e-books, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act.”
…
“Throughout the complaint, the Justice Department claims that the publishers viewed Amazon’s retail price of $9.99 as being too low: “…the Publisher defendants also desired to have popular e-book retail prices stabilize at levels significantly higher than $9.99″”.
At issue is the publishers’ “agency model” in which they set the retail price and give preference to Apple which gets 30% off the top.
And then there was this:
“Yes, prices to customers have gone up because of Apple’s contractual innovation—but the question is really whether those low prices were good for consumers. Justice should be asking whether Amazon’s low prices could be destroying value-adding services throughout the supply chain, and whether those low prices were likely to persist if no other e-retailers would enter the market.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2017991064_amazon16.html
Speculation abounds that Amazon triggered e-book lawsuit
Nice headline for an article on DoJ against Apple and five publishers colluding to implement their ‘agency model’. That is, the publishers get to set the retail price, Apple gets 30% off the top and book buyers pay more.
“Amazon.com popped up throughout a lawsuit filed last week by the Justice Department against Apple and five major publishers, stoking speculation about its role, if any, in the proceedings.
…
“Amazon is mentioned about 90 times in the government’s lawsuit against Apple and the five publishers: Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster.
…
“Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said the potential consequences for bricks-and-mortar retailers are “frightening.” He said he supports new online sales channels but not at the expense of bookstores — the best places, he believes, to discover new authors.
“Amazon’s history is to undermine bookstores by focusing its predatory pricing practices on titles that those stores are trying to sell,” he said. “It’s open season again.”
Yeah, right, Paul. And your quibbles about the Kindle2? Color me unimpressed by your, and others, faux altruism on behalf of bookstores, publishers, and derivative rights, and “new authors” brought you by those wonderful traditional publishers.
Maybe they should just bite the bullet and admit their 150 year old business model for market control is sooooo yesterday.
And the key takeaway from the below interview:
[interviewer suggests Aiken is fighting technology] “We don’t want to fight it, we want it to be licensed.”
http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/27/the-engadget-interview-paul-aiken-executive-director-of-the-au/
(This is about the Kindle2 text-to-speech capability.)
Funny little slip in that article, referring to “Jeff Bezo’s” …
Authors Guild was active in the publishers’ lawsuit against Google’s mass-digitization of copyrighted books – but the publishers reached an agreement with Google and dropped said lawsuit. Authros Guild carries on the good fight – Aiken: “ … our class-action lawsuit on behalf of U.S. authors continues.”
Amazon, in 2010, had 80% of the e-book retail market. Now, they have 60% and Barnes and Noble takes around 30%.
From April, 2012:
E-book lawsuit pressures publishers, boosts Amazon
“Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business: “The traditional business model for publishers is under threat, and I think we will see it reshaped.”
…
“If the Kindle consolidates its position as the dominant player in the e-book business, Amazon will be taking a larger share of what consumers pay for e-books, and publishers will have little leverage in dealing with the giant online retailer.
“That sounds like bad news for consumers.
“Indeed, booksellers and publishers have argued that the Justice Department’s lawsuit will allow Amazon.com to operate as a monopoly.”
A lot more blah and faux concern for the poor traditional publishers and the close:
“Is Amazon.com about to reshape the publishing industry?”
They already have. Just ask E.L. James, Amanda Hocking, or Hugh Howey
And here is an excellent analysis of why traditional publishing is broken:
Muck About says:
The name of the Justice Department Game is, “If it works and the consumer is benefiting and the e-book publishing business is thriving, then The Justice Department’s obligation is to BREAK IT UP!”
Give me a fucking break. Just throw our crooked Attorney General under the bus over Fast and Furious and for God’s sake, just start over from the top down.. Pay all the bastards to show up every day but they have to promise to do nothing for 8 hours every day.. They’d do less harm that way.
MA
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3rd December 2012 at 8:19 pm
Eddie says:
Sorry. I am not in agreement with the Forbes article.
For one thing, not all people who sell huge volume are great writers. Some of them aren’t even good. The author uses Sue Grafton as an example of a major writer…Sue Grafton is NOT a good writer. She has a shtick. A formula. Her books are the lowest common denominator of written language. There are a hundred more successful fiction writers in various genres that are just the same. Hacks. Successful, but hacks nonetheless.
Meanwhile, a ton of excellent authors have short-circuited the process and found their readers online. I say more power to them.
There seems to be some complaint that all the indies make it too hard for readers to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that we need publishers to help us with that…what an unbelievable crock of shit that is. The publishers are like Hollywood, trying to repackage and resell the SAME book to us a million times, for full hardcover price (and then again a million more times at a discount in paperback).
The author talks about how John Kennedy Toole committed suicide after all his rejections for A Confederacy of Dunces…and then tries to tell us that was a good thing, because, gee, Simon and Schuster (who rejected it) REALLY liked it… they just thought the book had a major flaw…needed some work. Guess that’s why it won a Pulitzer in it’s original unchanged form after the writer’s death.
Maybe editors do sometimes help writers get out a better book. But I’d say just as many times they are the equivalent of movie censors, trying to turn art into something that will sell, so the house can profit.
I welcome the rise of internet self publishing. The cream will rise to the top. I hardly need some Yaley elitist to tell me what to read. I’ve been separating the wheat from the chaff since I got my first library card.
The publishing houses need to get better at picking winners. As is see it, the problem they have is that they really don’t know good writing from bad..because that takes a certain literary intelligence that has been lost somewhere on the road to modern book marketing. They only want to bet on a sure thing…which means that they want to publish something that is LIKE something else that sold well.
They would never publish Ayn Rand if she walked in with Atlas Shrugged today. It isn’t like anything else. They wouldn’t publish jack Kerouac. They wouldn’t publish Gertrude Stein. They probably would ask Hemingway to jazz it up a little and quit using those short declarative sentences.
Maybe the advent of television and mass advertising has had a dumbing down effect on the publishing industry. I rather think that may be the case.
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3rd December 2012 at 8:43 pm
ecliptix543 says:
Shit… Just imagine if Admin and the others who generate original articles and content here on TBP had to suck off some editor in order to get published in a magazine. Not only would the immediacy and relevance be lost, but so too the context within the tapestry of a collapsing republic.
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3rd December 2012 at 9:07 pm
TeresaE says:
Sour grapes from a dying, corrupted, club of an industry. Good riddance to old rubbish.
I wish I had faith that the “justice” leg would pretend to uphold this great nation’s governing laws.
Go ahead, jack up the prices you jackasses.
We, the people, the readers, your freaking CUSTOMERS, are broke. The higher your prices, the less we will (be able to) buy.
It is truly simple mathematics. We all make “X”. The government already takes “%X” immediately and that is going up, and then the government mandated we pay more for health care, also as a percentage of X, that has nowhere to go but up, food is going up, gas is going up, heat is going up, lights are going up, water is going (way) up.
Two things not going up are our hours or wages. Or the long-term outlook on our asset values.
Yep, dumbfucks, go right ahead and get the corrupted government to MANDATE your own demise. The UAW did it, and it worked, well, for now it worked. Hey, maybe if the judge rules in their favor he can also order the treasury to buy a bank and set it to work financing e-books from Simon & Schuster.
Eddie, GREAT points. My only question is if self-publishing is doing so well, shouldn’t independent/free-lance editing follow? Readers are such sticklers on proper grammar and such. We definitely don’t “need” a publisher to tell us which editor to use, and agents are usually worthless until after you have hit it big, or gained a following.
Rich tools clinging to the status quo are killing this country. One bogus law or lawsuit at a time.
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3rd December 2012 at 1:17 am
Novista says:
Good comments, people
Eddit, you’re right about Sue G. I’ve read them, it’s like eating peanuts, mildly satisfying. Publishing really went downhill when it became Really Big Biznizz. And editors don’t edit no mo’, too busy making deals and merchandising.
There was definitely a germ of truth about the pub. houses spending their money on a sure thing, and beginning writers have to do their own marketing. Of course, a whole new phase arrived when best selling authors got tired of the donkey work and others write their books, or when Alistair McLean died and his books kept appearing. WTF.
clipx, right on. It did get tedious, dealing with such — I wrote a YA biography of Nikola Tesla once for a publisher. When I sent the ms. in, some blonde binbo said, “It’s very technical!” Duh. I doubt she knew how to change a light bulb.
TE, the old publishing model passed it’s use-by date in an assisted suicide. But yes, really, there is independent freelance editors available for indie publishing, fees vary. And yes, another phase change was, in the old days, you wrote a book, sent the ms. to a publisher and hoped for the best. And at least someone would read it. In the next phase, there was no ‘slush pile’, the industry depended on agents to provide the wheat or chaff. LOL.
Back in the day, the conventional wisdom was start writing short stories for magazines, build a track record. Then move up to novels. It worked then. Later, the fob off excuse was “but you’re not a published novelist”. Right. So, knowing this, with my “Come Fly With Me”, I almost had an agent.
Found in a Usenet posting, sent an email, sounded interested, sent sample chapters. He wanted the whole thing. Fine. Sent that. He gave it to three professional readers, bottom line, they all praised the professionalism of character development, attention to spelling and grammar, etc. And his conclusion: rewirite it as a straight thriller.
Well, shit, why plow up old ground (and the fun of my story would be lost) and I abandoned it. So along comes blogging and eventually “Money in America” here and someone sez, CreateSpace. And I did. I reckon I write for ‘the remnant’, if others don’t get it, their loss.
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3rd December 2012 at 6:19 am
Nonanonymous says:
Now, if only the model could spread to the college textbook fraudustry. Information wants to be free, it is ignorance who stands in the way. It sucks for those otherwise ungainfully employed.
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3rd December 2012 at 7:08 am
flash says:
It’s a boatload of irony to hear a government monopolist labeling any private venture anti-competitive.
The pseudo justice department couldn’t find justice with both hands if it was seeping out their bunghole.
The justice department should get the beam out of it’s own eye first….
e.g. there’s plenty of smoke here
:http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/better_than_bourne_who_really_killed_nick_deak/
here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/frank-olson-cia-lawsuit_n_2206983.html
and here:
http://www.dunwalke.com/catherine_austin_fitts.htm
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3rd December 2012 at 7:58 am
Eddie says:
Novista
I used to read an awful of lot of mystery genre fiction. The field is an embarassment of riches. In recent years, though, the best has come from foreign writers and ex-pats. To me, Sue Grafton is to mystery writing as a sit-com is to television…something for people with a low IQ and no ability to appreciate the subtlties of the language. Not that she shouldn’t be published, or that she shouldn’t be successful. Fortunately for her, she found her audience. I wish her well. But she is the poster child for what’s wrong with the publishing houses, imho.
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3rd December 2012 at 9:06 am
DaveL says:
Wife and I both use Kindles. Wouldn’t think of going to a book store again. I think e-books should be a lot cheaper.
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3rd December 2012 at 11:35 am
Novista says:
Eddie
Here’s one of the absolute best reads, this one allegedly first novel in 1998
http://www.amazon.com/The-Breaking-Glass-Matthew-Hall/dp/0446605808/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354662891&sr=1-3-fkmr0&keywords=matthew+hall+%26%2334%3Bthe+art+of+breaking+glass%26%2334%3B
There are various other Halls Amazon turns up but I do not believe this person wrote anything else — except just maybe “Nightmare Logic” could actually be his first novel, hard to say.
It’s rare to find a writer who has so much detail on so many topics, which of course just makes his antihero believable. I still have that paperback from years ago and wouldn’t part with it.
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3rd December 2012 at 6:23 pm
Eddie says:
Thank you! I’ll have to take a look at it.
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3rd December 2012 at 6:38 pm
workingman says:
DaveL
Try this blog for free kindle blogs. http://www.fkbooksandtips.com/author/mgagler/
There are thousands of free books on Amazon in any one day. Most maybe crap, but there are some gems.
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3rd December 2012 at 7:51 pm