07-27-2018, 01:19 PM | #91 | |
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Yes, I assume that if the case had been dismissed then Apple would not have simply thrown their hands up and said "this isn't worth it" and put up a minimal ebook store. It seems a fairly safe assumption since they were putting quite a bit of effort into it before the case. You make some rather silly assumptions there. You seem to think that the only way to compete is via price. Apple has never competed on price. Back when B&N was doing well, they never competed with the discount book stores on price, they competed on a combination of price and experience. The whole point of the open market is that different companies compete in different ways. Some compete purely on price, others on convenience, others on customer experience. My assumption is that Apple would have competed on customer experience. iTunes was never the cheapest way to buy music, it was the most convenient way to buy music. Amazon could never get past the music convenience issue with their music store, even though they had DRM free music cheaper than Apple for a while. What the market would have looked like now if the case had been dismissed or had never come up, no one knows. Maybe Apple would have made the same mistakes that B&N did. I rather doubt it, but you never know. I will note that when B&N and then Apple entered the market, Amazon's market share fell 20 percent. There was opportunity there. So, yes, I do think there would have been more competition. Why do you think there wouldn't be? |
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07-27-2018, 03:20 PM | #92 | |
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@pwalker8. So your answer is that you presume Apple would have "competed" on "customer experience". In a market dominated by one-click purchasing and downloading books straight to ereaders. Once again I must quote Fizzy Water:
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To answer your question re more competition? The Appeals court actually affirmed that the conspiracy constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade per se. It also applied the rule of reason and reached the same conclusion. In the course of the latter it looked at Apple's various arguments along similar lines to yours and found them unconvincing. Black is not white. Anti-competitive contracts do not tend to increase competition. Last edited by darryl; 07-27-2018 at 03:48 PM. |
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07-27-2018, 03:52 PM | #93 |
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I fail to see why--if there are so many things other than price to compete on--the very first step publishers and Apple took to "spur ebook competition" was to level the price-playing-field. That dog won't hunt. "There's things other than price to compete on" is not a buyer's viewpoint. It's a seller's. And they're the only ones who think it sounds remotely reasonable.
As other's have pointed out: good deals can make crappy interfaces worth the hassle. And if Apple already had the leg-up on everyone else in the customer-experience/loyalty department, then surely they would have been able to compete at any price-point, no? They were better than everyone else at those other competitive things. It's all fine and dandy to say that there's plenty of things to compete on other than price--and there IS! It's just that all of those things take a back (back, back, back) seat to price. We're talking about the internet, here. It's not like people have to drive across town to save a few bucks. They're "shopping" from their armchairs. The things other than price are only relevant AFTER everyone's ability compete on prices have been stripped from them. And that only ever favors the big boys. That's not competition. That's restrictor-plate racing. Last edited by DiapDealer; 07-27-2018 at 03:54 PM. |
07-27-2018, 04:17 PM | #94 | |
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When there is one large corporation that has 90% of the market, then bringing in two more large corporations means more competition. That's kind of the definition of competition. More companies selling the same goods. From the publishers' point of view, having more companies out there meant that Amazon had less leverage over them. That is why the publishers wanted competition. In general, all three of the big companies (Amazon, B&N and Apple) had their customers locked into a infrastructure. Of course, all three allowed side loading, but few customers are willing to jump through those hoops. So the real competition is for which infrastructure a customer wants to buy into. None of them ever competed on price, even during the time period when there was no agency. Most here, especially those of us who use Calibre and who remove DRM are very much outiers in the overall customer base. It's a mistake to simply assume that everyone is hunting for the rock bottom lowest prices and is willing to jump through a lot of hoops to get it. Most customers are purely about convenience as long as the prices are what they consider reasonable. |
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07-27-2018, 08:21 PM | #95 |
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Price will ALWAYS be the most important factor, for many people including myself who immediately switched over to self published authors who used to be published Mid listers with BPH. As evidenced by the ever growing percentage that is reported by Data Guy, and by my finally starting to use the Library for BPH books.
My TBR pile is ever growing so I don't have to rely on BPH for ebooks, nor will I ever go back to getting PB instead of ebooks. Last edited by cfrizz; 07-27-2018 at 08:25 PM. |
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07-27-2018, 08:33 PM | #96 | |||||
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A longer quote from the Appeals Court is in order. Quote:
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I'll finish this post with another relevant quote from the Court. Quote:
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07-27-2018, 10:17 PM | #97 |
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07-28-2018, 03:44 PM | #98 | |
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The reason for that makes perfect sense if you stop and think of how businesses work rather than let your emotions get in the way. In general, the publishers sell the same book to each of the book stores at the same basic price. So price difference comes down to how much more an individual book store wants to charge for that specific book. Most businesses will match prices of their major competitors. This is true in quite a few different businesses. Thus prices tend to drift down to the lowest sustainable price point when there is competition, though this tends to play out when a new competitor comes into a market and makes a push trying to get market share. You see it in quite a few businesses such as books, electronics, even air travel. Of course, businesses have sales of select items, but in general, they keep a very close eye on what their competitors charge for things. This is what I mean by companies not competing on price. For the most part, over time competitors tend to charge the same price for the same piece of merchandise. It's just different pieces of merchandise are at different price points. |
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07-28-2018, 04:59 PM | #99 | |
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07-28-2018, 07:43 PM | #100 |
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07-28-2018, 09:02 PM | #101 | |
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@pwalker8. The existence of the price competition which you seem to claim didn't exist seems to me to be amply demonstrated by what happened when it was in fact removed by the price-fixing conspirators. Here is another passage from that inconvenient Court of Appeal decision:
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07-29-2018, 09:17 AM | #102 | |
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It's real obvious when someone forms an opinion and then goes and looks for evidence to support that opinion, rather than study a situation and read arguments from both sides. Last edited by pwalker8; 07-29-2018 at 09:20 AM. |
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07-29-2018, 10:23 AM | #103 |
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I did read the dissent. I do wonder if you have read the majority, which by the way represents the actual decision of the Court. The majority comprehensively addresses and debunks the dissent.
What you attempted to imply is essentially that because not all titles are discounted and competitors tend to match prices that there is no competition on price or at least that it is not important. What happened to prices after agency is a good indication of the actual effect price competition was having. Are you claiming that agency did not in fact lead to increased prices? |
07-30-2018, 06:08 AM | #104 | |
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If 5 percent of the titles are discounted by Amazon and 95 percent are not, then it's hard to claim there is real price competition, unless you cherry pick the 5 percent and ignore the rest (which is what Amazon's expert did). Yep, I do indeed claim that agency did not lead to increased prices for the vast majority of books. Prices of specific books have drifted towards what people are willing to pay, which is how a market works. I picked up some Jeff Shaara books a few weeks ago. The prices ranged from $5 (suggested paperback price $18.00) up to $10 (suggested paperback price $18.00). Pre agency, the so called sweet spot price that Amazon was charging was $10 with the vast majority of books costing about the same as the current paper price (either hardback or paper). In general, right now, the ebook price is at a slight discount to the current paper price (example Jim Butcher's most recent book which came out in June is $14.99 for the ebook and $20 for the hardback (list price $28.00)). Butcher's first book, Storm Front, is $2.99 for the ebook and $7.99 for the mass market paperback. Those are just the examples that I first thought of simply because I bought those books recently. Do you have an actual survey that examines ebook prices that shows that ebook prices have gone up, or is this simply a "everyone knows that agency drove prices up so no need to validate the assertion" thing? I mean a real one, not the flawed one put out by the prosecutor in the Apple case. I have been buying a large number of ebooks each year since 1999 when Baen's ebook bundles started and also started buying ebooks from the Sony store in 2006 a year before the Kindle came about and been buying from the Kindle store since 2007. I have a pretty good idea what I've paid for the various books. Even in the pre-agency days, most of the ebooks that I bought tended not to be discounted. I know this because when the brouhaha about agency was at it's high point back in 2012, I went back and charted what I had paid for the various books. I even posted a summary of it at the time. |
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07-30-2018, 06:20 AM | #105 | |
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