DB's Pixnet

The Economist, April 14TH-20TH, 2012
Page 69, E-book publishing
A too-cosy world?
New York
Readers may not be the ultimate winners in an e-book antitrust case

The price-fixing complaint that America's Department of Justice(DOJ) filed this week against Apple and five of the world's "Big Six" book publishers has a triumphalist tone, describing secret meetings in "upscale Manhattan restaurants". But it seems to take a rather narrow view of what is going on in the e-book industry.

Until two years ago Amazon, the dominant player in the market thanks to its Kindle e-reader, kept publishers on the "wholesale model" for e-books. This let them set the wholesale price but let Amazon sell the books at a loss, making it harder for newer e-reader makers such as Barnes & Noble to challenge its near-monopoly. That made for cheap e-books, competing against the print versions. Publishers and authors also feared that if Amazon remained dominant, it would eventually impose wholesale prices on them too, forcing weaker publishers and other book booksellers out of business. They were therefore delighted when Apple, on launching the iPad in 2010, offered them an "agency model", whereby they set the retail prices and give the retailer a fixed cut...

David CK Chang, SSN057-86-4042,
April 26, 2012,
National Central Library,
Taipei City