DRM Lawsuit Filed By Independent Bookstores Against Amazon, "Big Six" Publishers 155
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."
Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:2, Insightful)
Prices for most ebooks from amazon are priced correctly. best sellers being 15$ where a hardcover is 32.... raise that 15 and watch piracy skyrocket.
Re: (Score:3)
any advertisement for 'hardcover' on a e-book gets pirated on principle
Re: (Score:2)
I'd spend say 80% of paperback price to buy an ebook - there's still editing, marketing, and other costs, not just printing and distribution.
But for most popular authors, I *can't* BUY an ebook. I can LICENSE an ebook.
When it's mine, I can move it to other devices, give it away, lend it out, and otherwise have it completely unavailable to change/removal by the publisher or distributor, then I've bought it.
When comparing the value I get from purchasing a paperback (my preferred size, easy to hold and stick
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe for "best sellers", but I recently saw an Amazon eBook priced higher than the dead tree paperback version. WTF? Note: I did not buy it.
Re: (Score:2)
When a book first comes out an ebook is typically around $15 and the hardcover sells for 18-20.
The problem is, later when the massmarket comes out, the price of the massmarket is the same or less than the ebook.
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. You obviously need to spend more time with pre-edited books- most novels before editing are barely readable. The editors work for the publisher, who also promotes the book and acquires the copyright in most cases.
As long as the author was getting at least a third I'd be ok.
Re: Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. You obviously need to spend more time with pre-edited books- most novels before editing are barely readable.
Sadly true. Authors that are capable of self editing are a tiny minority. Five dollars would be a good price for the conditions attached to eBooks, that are not attached to dead-tree books. (not able to gift/sell the ebook when you're done with it, and with device specific DRM attached to it (I know, DRM is trivial to remove, but it's there))
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
> the publisher, who also promotes the book
You're funny.
A publisher actually doing promotion. That's hilarious.
Now editors are useful, just not nearly as valuable in terms of $$$ as publishers want you to think they are.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if Microsoft would try and get their cut based on the spelling and grammar correction in Word.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that it's much, much easier to prepare a book for print than it is to prepare an eBook. Preparing a book for electronic publishing is a bit like designing a web page in the mid-1990s, except that there are a lot more eBook reader vendors than there were browser vendors. Each one has its own set of quirks, some of which are... shall we say rather sizable sets. A single copy of your content has to look at least acceptable when used with all of those readers.
As much as I swear about the amount of time it took to create several thousand lines of custom LaTeX macros when designing the print edition of my novels, it pales compared with the amount of time I've spent on EPUB, MOBI, and KF8 versions. It has taken at least an order of magnitude more work, and that's a conservative estimate.
In addition to working around all the reader bugs, you'll also find yourself swearing at the lack of good fonts that can legally be distributed in such an easily opened format, particularly if you are distributing your books DRM-free. A big chunk of my time has been spent taking existing SIL-licensed fonts and redesigning parts of them so that they actually look acceptable. That's a lot harder than it looks.
Finally, the tools out there for doing electronic publishing leave much to be desired, particularly when it comes to working around all the aforementioned reader bugs. The folks working with major commercial design packages are having just as much trouble as those of us who are writing our own tools from scratch—maybe even more so, given that they don't have an easy way to fix bugs in their tools.
If my time has any value, I can't foresee a future in which the electronic versions of my trilogy of novels ever break even. I'd have to clear at least a couple hundred grand. That's a heck of a lot of books at ten bucks apiece (of which the publisher gets a lot less than ten bucks). Perhaps in ten years, when the technology has improved dramatically, eBook sales will be pure profit. Today, however, except for very, very basic transfers that eschew formatting altogether, I'd imagine that most eBooks are loss leaders.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that it's much, much easier to prepare a book for print than it is to prepare an eBook. ... Perhaps in ten years, when the technology has improved dramatically, eBook sales will be pure profit.
Paper books also require storage (particularly if you are dealing with large amounts) can be damaged in transit at any point (to/from retailer)... and a book that ultimately fails to sell is a total loss
Seems like eBooks should be much cheaper than paper books and often they are not. Your argument about the preparation-to-print expense makes sense for a relatively small release, but not for anyone operating in bulk, since that cost is completely independent of how many books you end up selling.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes and no.
The printing cost is nonzero, yes, but the unsold/destroyed rate is becoming less and less important over time. Even books by well-known authors are moving to a model where the publisher prints a large initial run and then does on-demand printing after that. And for new authors, publishers are
Re: (Score:2)
AND it is also ridicules when old (30-100 year old) books are $7.99 or more.
Re: (Score:2)
If you like LaTeX and want to produce EPUBs, I suggest you take a look at Pandoc ( http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/ [johnmacfarlane.net] and http://github.com/jgm/pandoc.git [github.com] ). It's a sort of swiss-army-knife of document conversion. It'll convert LaTeX to EPUB with a decent degree of accuracy. Lately it has been getting a lot of LaTeX-related enhancements, but it's still missing some staples like honoring \newpage and centered text. There's another package called tex4ebook ( http://github.com/michal-h21/tex4ebook.git [github.com]) that
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not crazy. The LaTeX is a production-intermediate temp file format. My source format is XML. :-)
The translation to HTML isn't what makes it hard. What makes it hard is the literally dozens of reader bugs that I've found along the way. You work around a CSS handling bug on one platform and it breaks the layout on three others. The amount of interaction I've seen between the various readers' CSS bugs is just plain jaw-dropping, at a level of complexity that far exceeds anything I would ever have ima
Re: (Score:2)
If my time has any value, I can't foresee a future in which the electronic versions of my trilogy of novels ever break even.
For future books, may be you should consider releasing your ebooks under some kind of creative commons/donation-ware license on github, and then let volunteers handle all the porting issues. That's what Cory Doctorow does for many of his books I believe.
If those books get well received, then there is always the bonus that it gets translated into a number of languages, and adapted into comic books and other mediums (depending on how liberal your licensing terms are).
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things never discussed in the ebook / paper costs debate are the costs of warehousing and taxes on unsold inventory and availability of "out of print" books. One of the reasons it's nearly impossible to get older works is they are purposefully allowed to go out of print. No publisher wants to do another run of 40,000 copies of "Pride of Chanur" and then hold onto them as they trickle out to bookstores and buyers. Publishers want the latest flavor of Teen Paranormal Romance which is selling NOW. They want to print 10,000 copies and then move on to the next latest Zombie Teen Paranormal Werewolf Romance. There's thousands of excellent books no longer available even used at a reasonable price. Ebooks allow publishers to warehouse zero copies, saving the tax on inventory and space requirements. Ebooks allow YOU as a writer ( assuming you've been at it a while ) to sell your backlist to new readers. Some of the great SF authors of the 60's and 70's have dozens of titles that are impossible to find. For the cost of converting or creating an ebook, you will continue to have a copy available to sell, in theory, forever as it will never go out of print.
Re: (Score:3)
Print on Demand
It's getting significantly better and cheaper, and even some large publishers are using it, particularly for backlist. If you print 10,000 copies of "this month's copycat paranormal romance" at $1 each and sell 1/3 of them (pulping the rest), you're paying the same per copy sold as if you printed 3333 copies on demand at $3 each (you can probably get a better price if you're doing that kind of volume) and they were only printed when someone said "I want a copy".
Re: (Score:3)
And lots of authors whose publisher contracts have expired also use POD. The notion of print runs needing to be large to be profitable are so last century.
Re: (Score:2)
No publisher wants to do another run of 40,000 copies of "Pride of Chanur" and then hold onto them as they trickle out to bookstores and buyers.
Your example is too mainstream; almost every bookstore I go into has at least some of the Chanur books, new. Try Vinge :)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that it's much, much easier to prepare a book for print than it is to prepare an eBook. Preparing a book for electronic publishing is a bit like designing a web page in the mid-1990s, except that there are a lot more eBook reader vendors than there were browser vendors. Each one has its own set of quirks, some of which are... shall we say rather sizable sets.
For something that's pretty much straight words that's not true-- you can generate an ebook that's the equivalent of a mass-market paperbook pretty easily. Substantially more easily than generating a nice looking paper book. If you want to add a lot of features (images, in particular) that can add some time and energy, but even cross references aren't hard to do with a little grep action.
There are some tools that are missing-- Indesign is just finally getting to where it can export a decent epub once you d
Oh pelase cry me a river (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
With a paper book, you prepare it once and distribute forever, too. You take the PDF that contains the book body text and you farm it out to traditional printers in various countries for large-scale distribution, or on-demand printers for small-scale distribution.
However, with print, the standards are strictly followed by the hardware manufa
Re: (Score:2)
Once you've got the electronic PDF you can distribute it as is to many distributors without change! No one needs to ever redesign it if it's in the same language and the same edition. The only reason people are changing it is to add DRM or other customer unfriendly features.
Re: (Score:2)
That's pretty much what I said. unless you're equating PDF with "electronic edition", in which case you're off by a mile. eBooks are almost never distributed in PDF form because PDF doesn't reflow, and thus sucks on small screens (most eBook readers).
So for print purposes, you can readily reuse the same content. For electronic editions, you can reuse the same content, but instead of being able to design a simple PDF that works everywhere, you have to do a lot more work to create a flowing EPUB book that
I'm puzzled. (Score:2)
You're an author, right? Why get into deep formatting at all? And given the very broad coverage of devices and markets that EPUB gives you these days, why would you attempt the formatting on any other platform by yourself?
If you feel you really need that coverage, why not just use something like Smashwords' services [smashwords.com] to get the other formats covered? (Granted, I'm not happy with the requirement to submit in .DOC myself, but for that kind of market reach I would be tempted. ;-) )
Re: (Score:2)
Author, software engineer, font designer, art designer.... I'm wearing lots of hats on this one. :-)
I'm currently up to about 3600 lines of Perl, 700 lines of XSL, and 2100 lines of custom LaTeX macros, plus four custom fonts....
I didn't go the Smashwords route because I want my books to have more of a distinct visual identity, and more to the point, for the electronic editions to look at least passably close to the PDF editions if you happen to set the page size the same. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Paper books require similar preparation. It's not just a trivial "print and ship", you have to design the pages and layouts and graphical design just as with ebooks.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the point is that it's a lot easier to do things like drop caps in PDF (where it always looks the same no matter what engine rasterizes it) and doing it in HTML/CSS (where I've seen drop caps be several em too high or too low in one reader while looking perfect on many others).
Re: (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: (Score:2)
The actual preparation step ends when you hand it off, whether to a printer for printing or to an electronic distributor for distribution. The work done after the press gets the file is not part of preparing a book for publication:
Re: (Score:2)
There are many such devices. If you want low error rates and pages that don't get torn, they're not cheap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It has nothing whatsoever to do with DRM. PDFs are not typically used for eBooks because they don't reflow, and thus can't adjust their layout, font size, etc. to suit the size and resolution of the screen.
If PDF files were good enough, the effort for producing an eBook would be exactly zero, because you'd just hand off the same file that you hand off to your POD printing house....
Re: (Score:2)
If you have a Kindle and Prime you can bowwor ebooks. I don't have a kindle so I don't know how well it works.
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you're joking. $15 for any fiction ebook is not a sound business model. I'd buy a good ebook for $5, but not $15.
I can only accept prices like that for certain kinds of non-fiction works where the market is smaller and the production/compilation effort is way higher.
I agree - if I'm going to pay for an eReader that takes away nearly all of the printing and distribution costs of a book along with most of the marketing costs, then I expect a significant discount on a $30 hardcover that's routinely discounted to $17 which is later sold as a $12 paperback discounted to $8.
$5 - $7 sounds more reasonable. Many Kindle books are priced higher than the discounted paper edition - even though I find reading the Kindle to be more convenient, I usually end up buying a used paperback (or even hardcover) because they are usually less than half the price of an eBook. I could even sell the used book after I'm done for a few dollars, making it even cheaper (though I usually just donate them to Goodwill)
So instead of getting $5 from me (minus the bookseller's profit), the publisher gets $0 from me for most of the books I read.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, how much do do think materials and production add to the cost of a book? Look, you can get a good laser printer that will do a double sided page for $.05 and one double sided 8.5x11 is roughly equal to 4 pages of a hard cover book. So with consumer equipment you can print the equivalent of a 400 page book for about $5.
I'm not a publisher, but I've got to believe that they can do it cheaper than I can with a printer from Staples.
So ever with a nice hard cover and shipping and handling and everythi
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:5, Insightful)
The publishers need to do a better job of lowering prices as time passes and on older books. But this "digital should be basically free" meme is bullshit.
No, it's not. People accepted physical book prices because they had no way to print them as nicely (yes, that does include the hard/soft-cover, dust-jacket, as well as actual binding, however shitty the glue-binding of current books), and they were willing to attribute some costs to transportation, shelf-stocking/presence, staff in the stores, and so forth. That was made books of value to your average consumer. E-books take that *all* away. The only thing left is a piddly bandwidth cost, and hard to quantify-or-appreciate, mysterious marketing/administration/editing costs. Whether that was actually the bulk of the cost or not doesn't matter---the price of actually printing a book is not the important part here, it's the perception of the price of a printed book. A physical object still seems inherently more valuable than a license to read a book on a device you have to buy separately.
Publishers can whine all they want about how little the physical book costs and how much of the publication cost is really all the other things, but all that does is inform consumers that publishers have been ripping them off for years.
Re: (Score:3)
Publishers can whine all they want about how little the physical book costs and how much of the publication cost is really all the other things, but all that does is inform consumers that publishers have been ripping them off for years.
Ripping them off? By not working for free? Or by paying authors? Basically no one gets rich in the publishing industry. The JK rowlings and Steven Kings are such statistical anomalies that it makes 'Hollywood star' look like a practical career path.
And things like editing are not particularly hard to quantify. A manuscript of a particular length will require a general amount of hours put into it. Those costs need to be accounted for in the final sale price. If they are not editors (and everone else that ma
Re: (Score:2)
And things like editing are not particularly hard to quantify. A manuscript of a particular length will require a general amount of hours put into it.
You'd think so, but it probably doesn't happen, based on the recent release fiction that I read.
A book from a major author that is going to sell close to a million units in hardcover shouldn't have spelling errors, repeated sentences, or text that runs off the bottom of the page. To see these sorts of errors, you'd think that I must read a lot of books, yet I've seen all that in just the last 5 books I've read.
That just covers the errors that are absolutely mistakes. Things like repeated use of the same m
Re: (Score:2)
Just for kicks, I was reading a Halo book and I felt like I was being talked down to. In the space of probably 20-30 pages I was reminded 3 times that "they had standing orders to recover any Covenant weapons." The first time I read the statement, I thought "Hey, that's a good idea." The second time "Yeah, I know. " The third time, -_- "Do you think I'm stupid?"
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a fan of the Halo games (never played them), but I picked up the Forerunner series from my local library - I never finished the first novel, for the very reasons you mention. It didn't feel like a story, it felt like a dictation.
Re: (Score:3)
Virtually all books-based-on-some-other-franchise series are garbage. Like, for example, Star Trek. OMFGWTFBBQ.
Re: (Score:2)
See also: Those wretched Dune prequels. So much repetition.
Re: (Score:2)
People aren't asking for it for free. They're asking for the product to cost less when it has cheaper manufacturing costs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Raise the price of books and see a mass exodus (Score:4, Insightful)
Worse than that. Depending on the sales model, publishers may get less money from an electronic book than from a print book, even after printing costs are taken into account.
For example, with Amazon's KDP program, you either get 70% of Amazon's current price (which is not your cover price) or 35% of your cover price, at your option. If you set the price at a fairly typical $10, you get $3.50.
By contrast, with print publishing, you get anywhere from 45–80% of the cover price, depending on how you set the discount (which affects how broadly you get distributed, but it is your choice). If you assume that a typical hardcover book costs under five bucks apiece, and you set the cover price at a fairly typical $25, even at a 55% discount (you get 45%), you get $6.24.
And at a more typical small-press hardcover discount of 30%, even if you set the premium at your actual manufacturing cost plus the eBook cost ($15), you get $5.50—significantly more than you get for the electronic edition at the fixed 35% royalty rate.
So there's really no guarantee that people are making more money off of electronic versions of their book, even ignoring the much, much higher cost of designing the electronic edition in the first place. Once you factor that in, you should be glad it doesn't cost several times what the physical edition costs. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess I just can't see why it is (or should be) complex. Especially given that you should be leaving all the presentation aspects to the devices themselves.
It just seems like spending a lot of time typesetting a document for viewing on an e-reader that may have a different height/width, and can be enlarged on that same screen, would be a losing battle that should not be dealt with by an author, but r
Re: (Score:2)
There can be a significant amount of markup work involved. Also many books include pictures or diagrams or chapter headers if some sort that need to be displayed properly. And many devices don't render quite the same.
Basically, it is significantly more work than just typesetting for print because it also has to be widely checked and modified for cross compatibility.
Re: (Score:2)
It takes a little time, but if you're even minimally competent with html and grep it's generally not that bad. And it takes less to make a decent looking ebook than a decent looking paper book. I see a lot of badly laid out print from small publishers.
Re: (Score:3)
And yet there are tool for this, no?
Epub is largely just packaged html. You can download free word processors (Atlantis) that will take what ever format you write in directly to Epub. I'm sure there are far more sophisticated tools as well.
And you really don't have to format for each device. It's the device's job to handle standard formats, and most of them do it rather well. Don't kid yourself into thinking they test on a wide variety of devices. Doesn't happen.
The truth is, once the book is through e
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You've obviously never tried to do anything even slightly interesting in EPUB. If you attempt drop caps and you want consistent rendering, you'll tear your hair out literally for months.
Here's a short list of the reader bugs that I've found personally:
I read you costing, and it makes no sense. (Score:2)
Worse than that. Depending on the sales model, publishers may get less money from an electronic book
To put your figures in some kind of perspective as to who out of step they are. Authors used to get between 10-15% royalty through tradition means. They now expect 50%...but are generally offered 25% *forever*. It looks pretty awful for authors.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/12/ebooks-publishing-deals-fair [guardian.co.uk]
Is seems the authors seem to think the what publishers arn't worth 75% of their book anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm talking solely in the context of author-publishers, comparing apples to apples, total return from the bookseller to total return from the bookseller. How that gets divided among author and publisher is an entirely separate issue.
Put another way, yes, if you use
Re: (Score:2)
> Seriously, how much do do think materials and production add to the cost of a book?
No more than the wholesale price of a paperback.
If you are trying to increase prices on me, then you are just smoking some really bad weed that's causing you to lose your grip with reality.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you're joking. $15 for any fiction ebook is not a sound business model. I'd buy a good ebook for $5, but not $15.
I can only accept prices like that for certain kinds of non-fiction works where the market is smaller and the production/compilation effort is way higher.
Paying $15 is paying to have it NOW.
If you wait to read it in a couple years, it will be much cheaper. Given the huge amount of written material available since the invention of the printing press, there is no real reason to read any fiction NOW, when reading it later will be just as entertaining.
Waiting a couple years or three e-books start costing closer to the amount of the author's royalties (if he was smart). I'm fine with paying a few bucks to the author. Maybe a few cents to the distribution chain.
G
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you're joking. $15 for any fiction ebook is not a sound business model.
And this is exactly why publishers hate ebooks. They make their lion share on the expensive hardcover books.
DRM Free (Score:2)
Nothing stops a publisher from selling a DRM free ebook, if they choose to do so. Nothing stops a user from buying a DRM free ebook and using it on their reader. Check out the Calibre program. What these publishers want is to force publishers to sell all ebooks in a drm free format. Not gonna happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly, Tor books are all available DRM free through Amazon, presumably other publishers could also do this if they desired.
I'm all for DRM free but it seems like they're barking up the wrong tree with Amazon.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing stops a publisher from selling a DRM free ebook, if they choose to do so. Nothing stops a user from buying a DRM free ebook and using it on their reader. Check out the Calibre program. What these publishers want is to force publishers to sell all ebooks in a drm free format. Not gonna happen.
It will happen - it took the music industry a while to come to terms with selling DRM free music, and the book industry will follow, especially since books are even smaller and easier to share than music - I've seen 20GB Blu-ray rips available online, a file that size could hold 20,000 eBooks.
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".
High or Low? (Score:2)
So wait....they're complaining that this "monopoly" is keeping the prices high or low? If it's keeping the high, I don't see how other retailers can be driven out of business. If it's keeping prices low...then it's good for the customer!
I thought anti monopoly laws were meant to protect consumers and not competition as the recent dropping of the probe against Google showed.
Re: (Score:2)
So wait....they're complaining that this "monopoly" is keeping the prices high or low? If it's keeping the high, I don't see how other retailers can be driven out of business. If it's keeping prices low...then it's good for the customer!
I thought anti monopoly laws were meant to protect consumers and not competition as the recent dropping of the probe against Google showed.
The problem with a monopoly keeping prices artificially low is that once competitors are driven out of the market, then the monopoly is free to raise prices. They can always keep out new competition by lowering prices wherever a competitor arises.
So even if a (non-regulated) monopoly is pushing down prices, that's not always a good thing in the long run.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that for ebooks, there is no "artificially" low price. You can sell it for a few cents and it'll still be enough to cover the marginal costs of producing a new one.
No one can predict the future. You can't automatically assume that Amazon will raise prices later on...that's like punishing someone for a crime they haven't even committed yet.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that for ebooks, there is no "artificially" low price. You can sell it for a few cents and it'll still be enough to cover the marginal costs of producing a new one.
No one can predict the future. You can't automatically assume that Amazon will raise prices later on...that's like punishing someone for a crime they haven't even committed yet.
How would you know if they are inflating prices? If Amazon did become a true monopoly over eBooks, any price they set would be the "market price" no matter how high or low.
Re: (Score:2)
Does it matter? The point is they haven't done anything yet so you can't punish them!
Re: (Score:2)
How would you know if they are inflating prices?
I think a book with the price that is higher than the paper copy of the same is one good indication.
Re: (Score:2)
How would you know if they are inflating prices?
I think a book with the price that is higher than the paper copy of the same is one good indication.
That is the state the market is in now, there is no monopoly, and Amazon wants to lower prices. So that is certainly not an indication that a monopoly exists.
Thats capitalism for you (Score:2)
You sound like a neotard that actually believes what you have been brainwashed to believe: that competition > cooperation.
Humanity didn't survive this long by competing against itself. Moron.
No this is simply capitalism, Amazon became the dominant player in the book market, by being early and cheap. That said I agree with the lawsuit that late to market should not be a barrier entry...especially when we are talking about glorified; infinity reproducible text files, and using *standards* to prevent lock-in is an excellent way, as Monopolies are really bad for capitalism.
Re: (Score:3)
So you're assuming that Amazon will raise prices later on? And you're willing to punish a company on the basis of what it might do in the future? Also, the pricing of an ebook can be just above zero and still cover marginal production costs.
Also, I'm 30 years old. But nice way to bring in an ad hominem.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the pricing of an ebook can be just above zero and still cover marginal production costs.
Unfortunately, "marginal production costs" are not the only costs being recovered by the sales price.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're assuming that Amazon will raise prices later on? And you're willing to punish a company on the basis of what it might do in the future? Also, the pricing of an ebook can be just above zero and still cover marginal production costs.
Also, I'm 30 years old. But nice way to bring in an ad hominem.
So what do you think Jeff Bezos meant when he said that Amazon is giving up short-term profits to trade for long-term growth. After they've grown as much as they can (i.e., they are a monopoly), do you think he'll tell shareholders "Thanks for your patience, we now dominate the book industry, but rather than raise prices to earn our hard won profits, we're going to continue to give up profit in order to keep prices low for consumers".
Somehow I don't believe that a billion dollar business is that altruistic,
Re: (Score:2)
So when they actually do something, that is the time to catch them. Basic principle of justice - you can't punish someone for something they haven't done yet.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No ad hominem meant. It was supposed to be a light-hearted joke but everyone's so sensitive these days that everything's offensive to someone. And I'll be 50 this year so get off my lawn.
So when they actually do something, that is the time to catch them. Basic principle of justice - you can't punish someone for something they haven't done yet.
They are being accused of doing something now. It's called predatory pricing [wikipedia.org]. It's illegal for a business with a dominate position to routinely sell a product under cost in order to drive competitors out of the market (or keep them from entering).
Now, whether it should be is a topic for a different argument about econom
Re: (Score:2)
They'll have a tough time proving that digital goods are being sold under cost.
Re:High or Low? (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you're too young to remember how Microsoft "abused its monopoly" by bundling Internet Explorer with the OS for free.
Nobody seems to remember the even worse abuse, where they required vendors to sell EVERY computer with a copy of a Microsoft OS if they wanted to sell ANY system with a copy. I lost count of the number of new computers I bought where the first step was to format the disk and then install Linux. That wasted a lot of the taxpayer's money, since I was buying each one off of a federal research grant.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they offered discounts for volume and paid for marketing it included Windows branding.
No, they explicitly told OEMs that if they sold any other systems with other operating systems that they would lose their pricing. That's why it was illegal, and that's [one reason] why the USDoJ found that Microsoft has abused its monopoly position. Then, under Bush, Ashcroft gave Microsoft a free pass. Then Bill Gates took his ill-gotten funds to a foundation to dodge taxes, and is now doing the IP dirty work of Big Pharma across the third world.
Why sue Amazon? (Score:2)
I don't understand why they are suing Amazon -- isn't it only the publishers that decide whether or not a book can be sold without DRM?
Amazon may very well have preferred pricing deals with some publishers (perhaps in part because they do support DRM), but it's still the publishers that are requiring DRM, not Amazon.
My Kindle reads non-DRM files in MOBI format just fine, so if the independents want to sell non-DRM files for Kindle customers, they can.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the point is that they would like to be able to sell the books as well, but the publishers have entered into a DRM related agreement with the vendors that lock other vendors out of the market. The publishers might be requiring the DRM, but if they are requiring Amazon DRM, then nobody else gets to play.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the point is that they would like to be able to sell the books as well, but the publishers have entered into a DRM related agreement with the vendors that lock other vendors out of the market. The publishers might be requiring the DRM, but if they are requiring Amazon DRM, then nobody else gets to play.
Sure, but why sue Amazon if it's the publishers that are setting DRM policy? That seems kind of like suing Exxon because the major car manufacturers require Exxon gas - Exxon may have paid GM a lot of money for that exclusive deal, but GM wasn't forced to accept the offer.
Amazon and Barnes and Noble seem to have a comparable book catalog, so it seems that publishers are happy to sell to anyone as long as they can enforce DRM.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why they are suing Amazon -- isn't it only the publishers that decide whether or not a book can be sold without DRM?
Amazon may very well have preferred pricing deals with some publishers (perhaps in part because they do support DRM), but it's still the publishers that are requiring DRM, not Amazon.
My Kindle reads non-DRM files in MOBI format just fine, so if the independents want to sell non-DRM files for Kindle customers, they can.
While Amazon lets publishers publish without DRM, they have no reason to encourage it-- locking people into the Kindle format is great for them. Apple is an anomaly because they're a hardware company-- they use the books and music to sell devices, while Amazon, Kobo, and B&N use the devices to sell books. Yes, Apple would like to have you buy everything from iBooks because they'll make more, but you can get free Amazon, Kobo, and Nook apps for your Apple devices, allowing you to read everything on the
DRM? (Score:3)
I don't see what DRM has to do with this. I would think that file formats are the issue. Kindles can read raw .mobi files among other formats. I assume other e-readers can do the same. I don't know of a single reader that ONLY supports DRM content. It could be onerous for an independent to support a ton of different formats, but I don't see what barrier optional DRM creates.
Even if they somehow get to argue this in court, Amazon has an out. I've seen material lately on their site that is marked "At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software applied." Look up "Bowl of Heaven" as an example.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't see what DRM has to do with this. I would think that file formats are the issue. Kindles can read raw .mobi files among other formats.
How did you get this so very wrong? It's not about whether Kindles can read other publishers' formats, it's about whether other eBook readers can read Kindle titles. They fear Microsoft-esque lock-in. History tells us that this is a valid concern.
Re: (Score:2)
If that's true, then the courts show throw the case out. The courts shouldn't be hearing cases that hinge on hypothetical future crimes. If anything, this would be a matter for the legislature.
Re: (Score:2)
It's called anticompetitive behavior, and it's a case for courts today. Amazon has a de facto position as the market leader and as such they can reasonably be found by a court to have certain responsibilities, like not forcing lock-in. At least, in theory. Microsoft never had an actual monopoly either.
Re: (Score:2)
How much money was wasted on the Microsoft trial, and what, if anything, was actually accomplished?
This is a problem for the market. iTunes had a similar issue with music until Amazon started selling tracks without DRM and charging less for them. This isn't a monopoly situation, this a ripe opportunity for competition.
Re: (Score:2)
How much money was wasted on the Microsoft trial, and what, if anything, was actually accomplished?
The money was wasted by Bush through Ashcroft. If not for that one fact, it would have been time well spent; we could have taken the money back from BillyG and paid down the deficit with it, or spent it on infrastructure improvements, or bought every citizen hookers and blow.
Re: (Score:2)
Do not forget that many people in this industry take it for granted that there must be DRM, or nothing can work.
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 :)
Carlin said we have gov't to protect us from this (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Don't bet on it. When it comes to copyright and the courts, evil always wins in the end.
Re: (Score:3)
only because good is dumb