Sigh. I suppose it was naive of me to think that customers (little guy) could force a large company (big bully) to act fairly – in this case regarding their policy of anti-competitive ebook pricing. Yesterday I wrote that they were breaking the ACCC law that governs “Resale Price Maintenance”. I said I’d tell the ACCC [...]
Entries Tagged as 'agency'
How Hachette Uses an Agency Agreement to Sidestep Anti-Competitive Pricing Laws in Australia
March 9th, 2011 · No Comments · ebookstore news
Tags:agency·agreement·anticompetitive·australia·hachette·laws·pricing·sidestep
The Agency Model. Not a bad idea, only illegal (in Australia)
March 4th, 2011 · 6 Comments · opinion
by Darryl Adams With Random House entering the Agency Price Model with the rest of the 5 big publishers (Hatchet, Harper Collins, Random House, McMillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster), there has been a lot of discussion about the practice. Firstly, to be clear, Agency Pricing is illegal in Australia. As a form of Price [...]
Waiting for Common Sense — Not: The Agency 6
March 2nd, 2011 · 1 Comment · opinion
It used to be the Agency 5, now it’s the Agency 6 as Random House has caved and instituted agency pricing. This further changes my book-buying habits. Let me start by saying that I am not outright opposed to the agency system. What I am opposed to — and appalled by — is the pricing. [...]
What’s wrong with Agency pricing
February 28th, 2011 · 9 Comments · opinion
As I’ve made it clear elsewhere, I hate the Agency Model. I think it’s anti-customer, and I long ago took a pledge not to buy any Agency Priced ebooks. But I’ve never really explained why I hate it. I’ve been listening to people defend the Agency Model for some time now, and most of the [...]
Random House knuckled under on Agency ebooks
February 28th, 2011 · 7 Comments · ebookstore news
It finally happened. The one hold out among the Big 6 publishers finally decided to go along with the pack. Random House will adopt agency pricing for ebooks for ebooks sold in the US starting on the first of March. Bleh. This was not the trend I wanted to see. I was hoping everyone would [...]
AP to launch digital licensing agency
February 7th, 2011 · No Comments · Uncategorized
Last week the Ap announced that they would soon be launching a new agency to handle licensing of digital content created by nearly 1,000 AP member publishers. This new company, the News Licensing Group, will operate independently of the AP and is expected to be financed be the news industry. From the press release:
Agency ebook pricing now under investigation in the UK
February 2nd, 2011 · No Comments · ebookstore news
The UK Office of Fair Trading announced yesterday that they were going to look into whether publishers broke the law in adopting agency pricing for ebooks. From the announcement: Following a significant number of complaints, the OFT has opened an investigation into whether arrangements that certain publishers have put in place with some retailers for [...]
Tags:agency·ebook·investigation·pricing·uk
Why Smashwords went Agency
December 2nd, 2010 · 1 Comment · ebookstore news
Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, wrote a blog post yesterday and he explained why Smashwords had decided to adopt the agency model. Somehow I missed it yesterday (still trying to figure out how). It’s quite long, so here is an excerpt of the most important part: …around July, Amazon increased their royalty rates for direct [...]
Tags:agency·smashwords
Smashwords just went Agency – signed new deal with Sony, B&N, Kobo
December 2nd, 2010 · 4 Comments · ebookstore news
Mark Coker, CEO of Smashwords, just sent me the following email: We’ve renegotiated our ebook distribution agreements with Barnes & Noble, Sony and Kobo. Effective yesterday, our 10,000+ Smashwords authors and publishers now determine their ebook prices at retail. No more discounting. The move also allows us to increase the royalty rates we pay authors [...]
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