5 ms·

If you're mad about the ebook market concentrating on Amazon, you should be absolutely furious at Apple over agency pricing. That was when ebookstores were laun

by fpgeek 11y ago

If you're mad about the ebook market concentrating on Amazon, you should be absolutely furious at Apple over agency pricing. That was when ebookstores were launching and competing for attention. Agency pricing blocked a critical dimension of competition when the big wave of new ebookstores was trying to get off the ground. And even if Apple didn't want to compete with Amazon over price, others did. For instance Google - their Play Books pricing model seems to be "discount whatever we can, wherever we can". Even in these "agency lite" days, they're still a useful price-match reference for the Kindle Store. Or consider Kobo - they had a regular stream of coupons that made them worth checking for a lot of books... until agency pricing clamped down on the books you could apply them to. Instead, agency pricing more-or-less froze the ebook market starting in 2010 until 2013 or so (when the last publisher defendant settled and started allowing discounting again), entrenching Kindle as the default platform for most readers, crushing smaller companies that wanted to try something different. More over, this has worrying downstream effects - encouraging many independent authors to be Kindle-only and so on.

vonklaus 11y ago
> If you're mad about the ebook market concentrating on Amazon, you should be absolutely furious at Apple over agency pricing. Pretty consistently, when I am not fucking about on here and trying to have a good sense of humor about various absurdities that we have all come to accept, I make the same broad points. So no I don't actually care that that amazon has the ebook market, and it wasn't encouraging that if Apple hadn't raised prices Google was waiting right there. My point was that Apple acted quite rationally however the system is unpredictable and rife with power imbalance. Which underscores the point I always make which is that; in this example, Amazon had a massive power imbalance. However, I also find it dosconcerting that Apple has end to end control over an entire ecosystem, albeit smaller than Amazon and Google. I Also find it disconcerting that almost exclusive access to internet and telephone communications is owned by 4 companies. I find it slightly absurd that one company controls almost exclusively the english language interface to the internet, owning operating systems, hardware, isps, DNS, browser, search, most code cdns ect. Amazon owns most of the underlying hardware developers build on, by some counts they have more servers than google. They own distribution of media both print and AV, as well as distribution of physical goods, which they service themselves and soon they will move deeper into transmission with automated freight movement of goods. Given that most manufacturing will go completely automated soon, Amazon will have the ability to operate the entire value chain almost completely aurtomated. Apple owns cellphones, router, laptops, music distribution, video distribution, controls a nontrivial sofgtware marketplace and has tons of other vertically and horizontally integrated side services. > Instead, agency pricing more-or-less froze the ebook market starting in 2010 until 2013. Agency pricing has caused a systemic underinvestkment in infrastructure at a time when it is more dire than ever. So while "encouraging many independent authors to be Kindle-only and so on" may be a problem, it has likley been solved by the millions of voicing empowered by the internet. so, i am trying to simply interject that we have maybe one more chance to fix it, and I should try and encvourage people to think at a higher level (not talking down to you as you seem to have more domain expertise) but in this sense it is kind of like a fractal pattern right, this small issue of content distribution and collusion, is actually a very tiny symptom of a very big content distribution and high concentration problem set. tl;dr I torrent e-books.

by fpgeek 11y ago

vonklaus 11y ago

> If you're mad about the ebook market concentrating on Amazon, you should be absolutely furious at Apple over agency pricing. Pretty consistently, when I am not fucking about on here and trying to have a good sense of humor about various absurdities that we have all come to accept, I make the same broad points. So no I don't actually care that that amazon has the ebook market, and it wasn't encouraging that if Apple hadn't raised prices Google was waiting right there. My point was that Apple acted quite rationally however the system is unpredictable and rife with power imbalance. Which underscores the point I always make which is that; in this example, Amazon had a massive power imbalance. However, I also find it dosconcerting that Apple has end to end control over an entire ecosystem, albeit smaller than Amazon and Google. I Also find it disconcerting that almost exclusive access to internet and telephone communications is owned by 4 companies. I find it slightly absurd that one company controls almost exclusively the english language interface to the internet, owning operating systems, hardware, isps, DNS, browser, search, most code cdns ect. Amazon owns most of the underlying hardware developers build on, by some counts they have more servers than google. They own distribution of media both print and AV, as well as distribution of physical goods, which they service themselves and soon they will move deeper into transmission with automated freight movement of goods. Given that most manufacturing will go completely automated soon, Amazon will have the ability to operate the entire value chain almost completely aurtomated. Apple owns cellphones, router, laptops, music distribution, video distribution, controls a nontrivial sofgtware marketplace and has tons of other vertically and horizontally integrated side services. > Instead, agency pricing more-or-less froze the ebook market starting in 2010 until 2013. Agency pricing has caused a systemic underinvestkment in infrastructure at a time when it is more dire than ever. So while "encouraging many independent authors to be Kindle-only and so on" may be a problem, it has likley been solved by the millions of voicing empowered by the internet. so, i am trying to simply interject that we have maybe one more chance to fix it, and I should try and encvourage people to think at a higher level (not talking down to you as you seem to have more domain expertise) but in this sense it is kind of like a fractal pattern right, this small issue of content distribution and collusion, is actually a very tiny symptom of a very big content distribution and high concentration problem set. tl;dr I torrent e-books.