Lots of flaws here in your argument. Amazon's current pricing is 30% cut and 70% to the publisher, then they add fees for a lot of other things and pretty soon your down to about 60% to amazon and 40% to the publisher. Then lets say that your book becomes popular and amazon wants to undercut everyone on the planet they then make your book free! It drums them up sales hits they compensate for it with the other parts of there business and best of all you as an indie publisher GO BROKE
selling your book for free! What a bargin! Meanwhile Amazon keeps it monopoly on the market at around 90% and strong arms publishers to sell there books on amazons store because there is really nowhere else that can compete that can sell them (the remaining 10%).
Contrast that with apples iBook store agency model you publish your book at the price you want (after all you wrote the book) Apple takes 30% and you get a legitimate 70% with no fees attached and your book will never be sold for any less than you want. The thing that has people mad is that the publishers themselves not apple decided that if the book is on sale at apples ibook store they wont sell it anywhere else for less. Apple had nothing to do with that decision. Amazon does not like this. They want to be able to undercut whomever they want, so they cry foul. Note that amazon can still sell the books that are for sale on the apple store but at the same price. The people that own the books have a right to sell there books for the price they want.
By the way apple uses the agency model to sell music, movies, tv shows, and audio books, it is a fair way to sell things.
The DOJ has there head so far up there ass on this one they will be lucky if they win. Even Senator Chuck Shumer wrote a letter to the doj asking them to drop this ridiculous law suit.
And the flaw in your logic is that amazon no longer has 90% of the e-book market. Your scenario might have been true when it was a kindle only market but now iPad, Android Tablets and Nook all share the same marketplace. Logic says these retailers should be able to compete on the free market by offering these books at their lowest price and compete based on price. Now prices are artificially inflated because the agency agreements they have with apples say that they can't offer the books elsewhere for less. Normally I would agree that manufacturers should be able to price their goods as they see fit but we're talking about monopolistic pricing which is keeping prices artificially high. The proof, look at the price of physical books. Physical books are on average less expensive than their electronic counterparts. You can't call this supply and demand since there is no supply component per se to a virtual good. It costs as much to sell 1 as it does 100 electronic versions.
Allowing retailers to price electronics to books the same way they do physical books is good for consumers and competition so I support the DOJ's actions here.
"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." —Winston Churchill
Good quote. I've read and heard that before. The only problem is that, if this was your presumption anyway, we do not have a true democracy. If you were inferring to the United States of America. Pretty good try though...
. The proof, look at the price of physical books. Physical books are on average less expensive than their electronic counterparts. You can't call this supply and demand since there is no supply component per se to a virtual good. It costs as much to sell 1 as it does 100 electronic versions.
Allowing retailers to price electronics to books the same way they do physical books is good for consumers and competition so I support the DOJ's actions here.
O.k. I get your argument. Although you do realize you kind of contradticted yourself there right?
I'm someone who is trying to publish a book(s). I have sat with publishers and they have gone over (in quite vivid detail), how much it would cost to print, what their take would be, what the distribution cost 'could' be. Also they like to hit you with "If it doesn't sell, we'll be eating all this cost".
Then I go home and buy my favorite book on my iPad for $14.99. New release. No hard cover. No book signing... It kind of boggles the mind. There's no printing cost. In my young adult mind i cant reconcile the difference. Distribution costs (although I'm sure you guys would point out some) seem to be a one time charge. It just gets sold over and over and over.
Mind you that now you have to submit it in digital format. Both PDF (which is huge), and on the format it was written in. ...and some still want it printed too. On top of the digital copies.
You hear over and over "make it look professional". So you literally did all the work, and then gave them the file in several different formats.
I'm rambling, but I agree with the first part of your post. But retailing an e-book for the same price just sounds so weird to me because I've been told, so many times, how much goes into printing and distributing. The e-book should cost less than even a paper back.
I would be happy with $1.00 for each book. But I've been told it would retail for 6.99 paperback, and I would get .37 per book sold.
Just my .02, or .37 depending on how you look at it.
Would love to see a post from a published author...
Apple is arrogant and most Apple people have no objectivity when it comes to criticism of Apple..some of them actually believe that Apple products are high quality..yeah right
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mechanic
Ive come to the conclusion that the DOJ is run by bozo the clown and his clown car friends.
I have to admit I had seen that when I vas very young, on cable. Then, later on in life (read: college, just a couple years ago) I read IT. Maybe that's why some people don't like clowns..
Good quote. I've read and heard that before. The only problem is that, if this was your presumption anyway, we do not have a true democracy. If you were inferring to the United States of America. Pretty good try though...
It's Churchill's quote, not mine. I'm quite aware the US is a democratic republic.
I was well well aware of that. After all you did quote it. However, you posted it in response to a post about the U.S. government. That's the reason I posted.
Actually, I almost made another post apologizing once I saw your 'nic', so to speak. I've read a lot of you posts and you have great insite and views.
America is bankrupt, Apple has billions, court cases raised to get Apples billions. Nothing to do with ebooks, they just want to impose a multi billion dollar fine.
Would love to see a post from a published author...
Actually, I'll quote myself before I get lambasted. When you ask a publisher "Can we just do an e-print?". You get an answer, which must be like Siri because no matter which publisher you're speaking with you get this response... "well, one form follows the other. If it does well in print, it should do well electronically. We can discuss those terms once it gets to that level."
America is bankrupt, Apple has billions, court cases raised to get Apples billions. Nothing to do with ebooks, they just want to impose a multi billion dollar fine.
No my friend, if the government actually wanted money, (and I'm not saying we're not bankrupt) they could give apple a small tax break to bring their money back to the states. Last I read it would be quite a bit more, even with a break, than they could ever get from this type of litigation.
Reading through the comments, it's fairly apparent that hardly anyone has even bothered to read the DoJ complaint. The evidence against Apple and the publishers is pretty damning. If even half of it is true, this is a clear cut case of antitrust violation. I get that Amazon is a ruthless competitor but guess what? That's not illegal. However, a group of companies banding together to inflate prices across the board is. Not only that, it is a "per se" antitrust violation, meaning there are no mitigating factors. In other words, you can't walk into court and go, "Yeah but your honor, Amazon hit us first." As for the DoJ ignoring the bulk of the public complaints in refusing to drop the suit, this is not American Idol. You don't win just because you have the most votes. I read some of those complaints and even a layperson like me could see that they didn't have a basis in law. Rather these are publishing industry people desperately trying to avoid the same disintermediation that happened to the music industry. Good luck with that.
ow is it price fixing to enter into an agreement not to sell your product somewhere else for less than you sell it to me?
If they all got together and agreed on a specific price per word, or per page or per title even and then enforced that price everywhere maybe then there is a case.
and if what Apple is doing is price-fixing then I think the state government setting a minimum price on items such as beer and wine must also be price fixing - but since that is sanctioned by the government then it must be okay instead of illegal price fixing.
weren't there anti-comptetitve rumblings on this subject as well? who is it anti-competitive to have every reseller get the same deal from the supplier? Price is not the only factor in a purchasing decision, or at least not every decision.
If they all got together and agreed on a specific price per word, or per page or per title even and then enforced that price everywhere maybe then there is a case.
This is exactly what is alleged in the DoJ complaint, that the publishers and Apple got together and agreed upon specific prices for ebooks that were based solely on the hardcover version of the same books. These prices were the same regardless of whether consumers bought the books at Amazon, Sony, B&N, Apple, etc.
Have any one of you ever seen one of the pie charts that shows how much the Author gets from the sale of a book? It's always under a $1. The big publishers were looking for a way to save themselves from being forgotten about, because sites like Amazon make it to easy for an author to sell a book without a publisher, and Amazon only keeps something like 10%, giving a much greater sale.
And even if you choose not to agree with the above argument, common sense should tell you that a digital version of a book should always be MUCH cheaper than a paperback, not the same price or even more like it has been recently. Just think of all the costs that goes into printing a book, guessing how many copies you need, and distributing the books across the country. Meanwhile you can post a book on Amazon in under 5 minutes with a couple clicks.
And 3 of the 5 publishers have settled out of court.
This is a slam dunk for DoJ, and I am extremely proud that they are putting a stop to this price fixing.
Amazon takes 30% of the sale price of a book, three times your 10% lie, up to 70% if you price your book above a certain price, seven times your 10% lie.
Go look at Amazon's terms and conditions.
Common sense tells me that the rest of your post is just as invalid as your 10% lie.
How is Amazon's alleged monopoly status supposed to cancel out Apple's alleged collusion? They're independent issues and should be dealt with independently.
The only flaw to your ignorant filled statement is that Amazon pays for the books up front. If they choose to sell them for free, what does an indie author care, they are still paid. Amazon takes the loss. Keep making crap up, it is entertaining to read. The only party harmed here is the ancient business model the publishers are trying to hold on to. They refuse to except that they are no longer needed. Amazon will do all the work for the authors, promotion, distribution ect.... And instead of a measly 1% they used to get, now they get 30% and that scares the publishers.
Amazon used to pay up front, they use the Agency model now. How Amazon puts your book up for zero price depends on what you get. In some cases if Amazon sells the book for zero you get zero, and Apple etc. will price match and also sell your book for zero, so you get nothing from anybody. Most authors place their books with many services and occasionally one will sell the book at prices below what the author wants them too, then all the sellers sell the book for less. Amazon will sometimes pay the author the original fee and discount the book, so the author does not lose money from Amazon but they still take a hit on every other service their book is listed on. Under traditional sales models authors typically got around 10% of the list price, top authors did better. When ebooks first hit they may have got even less on ebooks, but some now are getting closer to 30%, but most less. The major publishers also have messed up accounting systems so that it the authors may not be getting what they should, but that is another issue. Amazon is itself now a publisher competing against the rest of the houses. At least Apple is just retailing books not competing with their own authors.
Correct, I was mistaken about Amazon only taking 10%, it is actually 30%. However, that's still a lot more than what the publishers give to the Author's. And Amazon was usually right in where they priced books, Amazon knew that more people would buy a book if it was priced at 9.99 rather that 12.99, that 9.99 would actually make them more money selling at 12.99. Its called economics, finding what price you can reach the most consumers.
And here's one of the articles on the THIRD publisher settling: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57436521-37/simon-schuster-settles-e-book-antitrust-suit-with-state-ags/ . That means that even though those three publishers would have been in a lawsuit with Apple, a company that has billions of dollars in its warchest to throw at a case like this, they STILL settled, obviously meaning that they must believe they did wrong doing.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mechanic
Lots of flaws here in your argument. Amazon's current pricing is 30% cut and 70% to the publisher, then they add fees for a lot of other things and pretty soon your down to about 60% to amazon and 40% to the publisher. Then lets say that your book becomes popular and amazon wants to undercut everyone on the planet they then make your book free! It drums them up sales hits they compensate for it with the other parts of there business and best of all you as an indie publisher GO BROKE
selling your book for free! What a bargin! Meanwhile Amazon keeps it monopoly on the market at around 90% and strong arms publishers to sell there books on amazons store because there is really nowhere else that can compete that can sell them (the remaining 10%).
Contrast that with apples iBook store agency model you publish your book at the price you want (after all you wrote the book) Apple takes 30% and you get a legitimate 70% with no fees attached and your book will never be sold for any less than you want. The thing that has people mad is that the publishers themselves not apple decided that if the book is on sale at apples ibook store they wont sell it anywhere else for less. Apple had nothing to do with that decision. Amazon does not like this. They want to be able to undercut whomever they want, so they cry foul. Note that amazon can still sell the books that are for sale on the apple store but at the same price. The people that own the books have a right to sell there books for the price they want.
By the way apple uses the agency model to sell music, movies, tv shows, and audio books, it is a fair way to sell things.
The DOJ has there head so far up there ass on this one they will be lucky if they win. Even Senator Chuck Shumer wrote a letter to the doj asking them to drop this ridiculous law suit.
And the flaw in your logic is that amazon no longer has 90% of the e-book market. Your scenario might have been true when it was a kindle only market but now iPad, Android Tablets and Nook all share the same marketplace. Logic says these retailers should be able to compete on the free market by offering these books at their lowest price and compete based on price. Now prices are artificially inflated because the agency agreements they have with apples say that they can't offer the books elsewhere for less. Normally I would agree that manufacturers should be able to price their goods as they see fit but we're talking about monopolistic pricing which is keeping prices artificially high. The proof, look at the price of physical books. Physical books are on average less expensive than their electronic counterparts. You can't call this supply and demand since there is no supply component per se to a virtual good. It costs as much to sell 1 as it does 100 electronic versions.
Allowing retailers to price electronics to books the same way they do physical books is good for consumers and competition so I support the DOJ's actions here.
Good quote. I've read and heard that before. The only problem is that, if this was your presumption anyway, we do not have a true democracy. If you were inferring to the United States of America. Pretty good try though...
O.k. I get your argument. Although you do realize you kind of contradticted yourself there right?
I'm someone who is trying to publish a book(s). I have sat with publishers and they have gone over (in quite vivid detail), how much it would cost to print, what their take would be, what the distribution cost 'could' be. Also they like to hit you with "If it doesn't sell, we'll be eating all this cost".
Then I go home and buy my favorite book on my iPad for $14.99. New release. No hard cover. No book signing... It kind of boggles the mind. There's no printing cost. In my young adult mind i cant reconcile the difference. Distribution costs (although I'm sure you guys would point out some) seem to be a one time charge. It just gets sold over and over and over.
Mind you that now you have to submit it in digital format. Both PDF (which is huge), and on the format it was written in. ...and some still want it printed too. On top of the digital copies.
You hear over and over "make it look professional". So you literally did all the work, and then gave them the file in several different formats.
I'm rambling, but I agree with the first part of your post. But retailing an e-book for the same price just sounds so weird to me because I've been told, so many times, how much goes into printing and distributing. The e-book should cost less than even a paper back.
I would be happy with $1.00 for each book. But I've been told it would retail for 6.99 paperback, and I would get .37 per book sold.
Just my .02, or .37 depending on how you look at it.
Would love to see a post from a published author...
Quote:
Originally Posted by daylove22
Apple is arrogant and most Apple people have no objectivity when it comes to criticism of Apple..some of them actually believe that Apple products are high quality..yeah right
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mechanic
Ive come to the conclusion that the DOJ is run by bozo the clown and his clown car friends.
I utterly disagree.
It's probably Pennywise:
I have to admit I had seen that when I vas very young, on cable. Then, later on in life (read: college, just a couple years ago) I read IT. Maybe that's why some people don't like clowns..
Kind of freaky though isn't it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vadania
Good quote. I've read and heard that before. The only problem is that, if this was your presumption anyway, we do not have a true democracy. If you were inferring to the United States of America. Pretty good try though...
It's Churchill's quote, not mine. I'm quite aware the US is a democratic republic.
I was well well aware of that. After all you did quote it. However, you posted it in response to a post about the U.S. government. That's the reason I posted.
Actually, I almost made another post apologizing once I saw your 'nic', so to speak. I've read a lot of you posts and you have great insite and views.
Thank you for responding!
Actually, I'll quote myself before I get lambasted. When you ask a publisher "Can we just do an e-print?". You get an answer, which must be like Siri because no matter which publisher you're speaking with you get this response... "well, one form follows the other. If it does well in print, it should do well electronically. We can discuss those terms once it gets to that level."
No my friend, if the government actually wanted money, (and I'm not saying we're not bankrupt) they could give apple a small tax break to bring their money back to the states. Last I read it would be quite a bit more, even with a break, than they could ever get from this type of litigation.
Reading through the comments, it's fairly apparent that hardly anyone has even bothered to read the DoJ complaint. The evidence against Apple and the publishers is pretty damning. If even half of it is true, this is a clear cut case of antitrust violation. I get that Amazon is a ruthless competitor but guess what? That's not illegal. However, a group of companies banding together to inflate prices across the board is. Not only that, it is a "per se" antitrust violation, meaning there are no mitigating factors. In other words, you can't walk into court and go, "Yeah but your honor, Amazon hit us first." As for the DoJ ignoring the bulk of the public complaints in refusing to drop the suit, this is not American Idol. You don't win just because you have the most votes. I read some of those complaints and even a layperson like me could see that they didn't have a basis in law. Rather these are publishing industry people desperately trying to avoid the same disintermediation that happened to the music industry. Good luck with that.
ow is it price fixing to enter into an agreement not to sell your product somewhere else for less than you sell it to me?
If they all got together and agreed on a specific price per word, or per page or per title even and then enforced that price everywhere maybe then there is a case.
and if what Apple is doing is price-fixing then I think the state government setting a minimum price on items such as beer and wine must also be price fixing - but since that is sanctioned by the government then it must be okay instead of illegal price fixing.
weren't there anti-comptetitve rumblings on this subject as well? who is it anti-competitive to have every reseller get the same deal from the supplier? Price is not the only factor in a purchasing decision, or at least not every decision.
If they all got together and agreed on a specific price per word, or per page or per title even and then enforced that price everywhere maybe then there is a case.
This is exactly what is alleged in the DoJ complaint, that the publishers and Apple got together and agreed upon specific prices for ebooks that were based solely on the hardcover version of the same books. These prices were the same regardless of whether consumers bought the books at Amazon, Sony, B&N, Apple, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ApolloFortyNine
Have any one of you ever seen one of the pie charts that shows how much the Author gets from the sale of a book? It's always under a $1. The big publishers were looking for a way to save themselves from being forgotten about, because sites like Amazon make it to easy for an author to sell a book without a publisher, and Amazon only keeps something like 10%, giving a much greater sale.
And even if you choose not to agree with the above argument, common sense should tell you that a digital version of a book should always be MUCH cheaper than a paperback, not the same price or even more like it has been recently. Just think of all the costs that goes into printing a book, guessing how many copies you need, and distributing the books across the country. Meanwhile you can post a book on Amazon in under 5 minutes with a couple clicks.
And 3 of the 5 publishers have settled out of court.
This is a slam dunk for DoJ, and I am extremely proud that they are putting a stop to this price fixing.
Amazon takes 30% of the sale price of a book, three times your 10% lie, up to 70% if you price your book above a certain price, seven times your 10% lie.
Go look at Amazon's terms and conditions.
Common sense tells me that the rest of your post is just as invalid as your 10% lie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Haggar
To paraphrase the typical "If you don't like it, don't buy it" response, if you don't like the U.S. Government, don't live in the U.S.
I don't.
So why should I be subject to your shitty laws?
How is Amazon's alleged monopoly status supposed to cancel out Apple's alleged collusion? They're independent issues and should be dealt with independently.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hellacool
The only flaw to your ignorant filled statement is that Amazon pays for the books up front. If they choose to sell them for free, what does an indie author care, they are still paid. Amazon takes the loss. Keep making crap up, it is entertaining to read. The only party harmed here is the ancient business model the publishers are trying to hold on to. They refuse to except that they are no longer needed. Amazon will do all the work for the authors, promotion, distribution ect.... And instead of a measly 1% they used to get, now they get 30% and that scares the publishers.
Amazon used to pay up front, they use the Agency model now. How Amazon puts your book up for zero price depends on what you get. In some cases if Amazon sells the book for zero you get zero, and Apple etc. will price match and also sell your book for zero, so you get nothing from anybody. Most authors place their books with many services and occasionally one will sell the book at prices below what the author wants them too, then all the sellers sell the book for less. Amazon will sometimes pay the author the original fee and discount the book, so the author does not lose money from Amazon but they still take a hit on every other service their book is listed on. Under traditional sales models authors typically got around 10% of the list price, top authors did better. When ebooks first hit they may have got even less on ebooks, but some now are getting closer to 30%, but most less. The major publishers also have messed up accounting systems so that it the authors may not be getting what they should, but that is another issue. Amazon is itself now a publisher competing against the rest of the houses. At least Apple is just retailing books not competing with their own authors.
What does Apple price fixing have to do with an Amazon monopoly?
Apple price fixed, and should be punish it doesnt matter it amazon had 99.999% of the market.
Correct, I was mistaken about Amazon only taking 10%, it is actually 30%. However, that's still a lot more than what the publishers give to the Author's. And Amazon was usually right in where they priced books, Amazon knew that more people would buy a book if it was priced at 9.99 rather that 12.99, that 9.99 would actually make them more money selling at 12.99. Its called economics, finding what price you can reach the most consumers.
And here's one of the articles on the THIRD publisher settling: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57436521-37/simon-schuster-settles-e-book-antitrust-suit-with-state-ags/ . That means that even though those three publishers would have been in a lawsuit with Apple, a company that has billions of dollars in its warchest to throw at a case like this, they STILL settled, obviously meaning that they must believe they did wrong doing.
And the DoJ has proof of the price fixing from Steve Jobs as well http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57434195-37/new-details-reveal-steve-jobs-involved-in-e-book-lawsuit/
The case is a slam dunk, please stop embarrassing yourselves and come to accept that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ApolloFortyNine
…they STILL settled, obviously meaning that they must believe they did wrong doing.
Wow, that's some flawed thinking.