But even if publishers did set prices together, it doesn’t mean DOJ has its priorities straight. They were reacting to an anticompetitive threat. One that the government won’t take on itself.
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#Realtalk: This is the best moment to be in journalism - The old stuff isn’t coming back, but that’s okay
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Sticking with the truth - How ‘balanced’ coverage helped sustain the bogus claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism
An ink-stained stretch - Can Aaron Kushner save the Orange County Register—and the newspaper industry?
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“[T]he most militant I have seen since the Nixon administration”
‘It was approved at the highest levels— and I mean the highest’
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CJR's Guide to Online News Startups
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The Business of Digital Journalism
A report from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
Questions and exercises for journalism students.
"Well, yes. The whole point of the pro-publisher view is that Amazon was abusing its monopoly position to stifle competition. It sold the publishers’ ebooks at a loss, making it difficult or impossible for competitors to enter the market and perpetuating its 90 percent market share. Somewhat ironically, Amazon only started making money on ebooks after the publishers forced it to adopt the new model (which gave it the exact same terms as Apple, by the way), which has reduced its market share by a third."
If going to the agency model allowed others to compete, which implies no other company could compete or it was incredibly difficult to compete in the ebook market before the agency model, then why did the Barnes and Noble release the Nook many months before the agency model came into play? Why did Kobo design and announce the Kobo ereader many months before agency came into play? Why did Sony, which had been in the ebook market for several years but is also a company known for scrapping electronic products that are non-profitable or appear as such, release new versions of its ebook reader and open an online store all before the agency model came into play?
In fact, Wikipedia has a nice article comparing ebook readers. If you look at the release dates from those companies, about 90% appear to have released before the agency model went into effect. How could this be if the ebook market was impossible or difficult to enter? After all, actually distributing the ebooks is the easiest part, yet all these companies saw a market opportunity for them to spend millions of dollars in R&D for the big piece--the reader itself.
And if you go to that wikipedia article, where is the flood of companies that should have entered the ereader market after the agency model?
Also, your line that Amazon only made money after agency pricing came into effect is unsupported by any facts. Since Amazon does not release individual segments of its book sales, instead including books in a general media category, your statement is more careless than your complaint with the WSJ saying "Antitrust Scholars..." One can reasonably assume not all antitrust scholars agree, but when you make a blanket statement such as "Amazon only started making money..." You are stating something that you also can't quantify.
#1 Posted by Al N, CJR on Thu 26 Apr 2012 at 02:03 PM
The anti-Amazon witch hunt is easily destroyed here.
E.g., just one basic exposure of the "antitrust" fraud:
"'Book Publishing’s Real Nemesis' by David Carr cites the recent antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department against five publishers and Apple, charging they engaged in the price-fixing of e-books. Instead of condemning this police action against production and trade, Mr. Carr bemoans the fact that the strong arm of the law didn’t go far enough to grip the 'monopolistic monolith' Amazon, which 'has used its market power to bully and dictate.' Mr. Carr considers it bullying and dictating when a private company (Amazon) sets its terms, and other players (the publishers) are free to do business with it or not. But it’s not bullying and dictating when the compulsory power of the state intervenes to set economic terms and punish businesses arbitrarily?"
Read the whole article for a thorough smashing of the blood-thirsty statists' attacks on freedom.
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 3 May 2012 at 04:50 AM