DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, "Big Six" Publishers 155
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samzenpus
from the do-not-read-list dept.
from the do-not-read-list dept.
concealment writes "Three independent bookstores are taking Amazon and the so-called Big Six publishers (Random House, Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan) to court in an attempt to level the playing field for book retailers. If successful, the lawsuit could completely change how ebooks are sold. The class-action complaint, filed in New York on Feb 15., claims that by entering into confidential agreements with the Big Six publishers, who control approximately 60 percent of print book revenue in the U.S., Amazon has created a monopoly in the marketplace that is designed to control prices and destroy independent booksellers."
Hold on a second wern't these the same publishers. (Score:4, Interesting)
...that were in a cartel with these very same publishers who had sided with Apple against Amazon http://www.policymic.com/articles/6812/apple-founder-steve-jobs-leader-of-ebook-price-fixing-cartel [policymic.com] that Steve Jobs what a player. I love the quote from the article on this "a move that was widely seen as benefiting Amazon's dominant position among ebook retailers"..clearly not the best understanding that, the move would simply shift the scale to Apple, and making it impossible for independent vendors to compete on price.
I actually agree with the reality that books need to be transferable [and films, magazines...oh and Applications hell anything stored on a computer with a price tag attached.]...so that the better technology competes. In fact lets go further I see no reason at all why you can't have multiple store fronts on every device you own...like say Android :)
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:DRM Free (Score:5, Interesting)
Nothing stops a user from buying a DRM free ebook and using it on their reader.
As long as someone is selling that book in DRM-free format, that is. I'm going through this issue now with the publisher of three magazines I read on a regular basis, one of which I've been a print subscriber for thirty years or more. The only DRM-free (and multi-format, to boot) vendor (Fictionwise) stopped selling. Every other source has DRM (or the equivalent, being tied to a proprietary reader program).
I complained loudly to the publisher and got ignored at first, and then I was told that this issue was being examined and they wanted to move away from the retailers they were using. The confusing part was that she said that "we won't do that DRM again". I don't know if she meant "we will be DRM-free when we arrange future retailers", or if she was referring to the DRM-free versions they used to provide to Fictionwise not happening again.
Either way, Calibre and epub is your friend, except when the publishers start mangling the formats so you get black and white cover images and say essentially "read these articles in this order".
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:3, Interesting)
It was sarcasm. How anybody could actually think that making an electronic book is more complicated or difficult than bringing a real book to press is beyond me. Logic alone will inform you of the correctness of this.
Ebooks go through absolutely no more preparation, at the worst case, than a normal paper book goes through before the press even gets the file.
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:4, Interesting)
I see similar things with digital-only games. There cost of making more and the cost to store is zero. An old book gets discounted so that it gets off the shelves, but in electronic form the price continues to stay high much longer. With games I see the same thing; packaged games end up in the bargain bins priced to sell while the exact same game in digital form may sell for double or triple. I used to see retail games have a very quick drop off of price, from $60 down to $40 in just a few months, yet newer digital games can keep that initial price for over a year.
There are two main reasons to hold sales in a retail store: to get customers into the store to see other non-sale good to buy, and to reduce inventory. For digital stores though only the first reason applies.
The reduced cost of production for digital products is never passed onto the customer.