Let's just take for the sake of argument that this wholesale model is "better" for some definition of better. The question at hand is, what right do you, or I, or anyone have to force- and here I mean, using the threat of violence or imprisonment if one doesn't comply- this model onto Amazon, Apple, or the publishers?
Amazon and Apple own their stores. The publishers own their books. Freedom of association says they have the right to decide what terms to do business with each other. We have a long tradition market pricing in this country, where everyone competes for some mix of market share and profits.
There's no evidence that the 6 publishers and Apple have colluded to set prices, quite the opposite-- in the new model the prices are variable, whereas in the previous model, the prices were fixed by one agency: Amazon.
The real change here is that there is more competition. Before Amazon had essentially a monopoly on ebook sales, and after they have to compete with Apple.
As a result, Amazon may have been able to force prices to be lower by using the publisher's assets as leverage to sell more Kindles at publisher's expense.
But now that there's competition in the ebook store market, do you really think that more competition is going to result in higher prices over time?
Looking at other media sold online, over time the prices have come down (inflation adjusted.)
You might want to fix wholesale prices at $10, but in order to do that, you really would have to engage in price fixing of some sort. That info graphic shows that the cost distribution is different, and that difference is a strong argument for ebooks being cheaper to buy - but not for a specific model of selling them.
In the previous model it is true that prices for eBooks on Kindle were set by one entity: Amazon. However, that did not mean that the prices of eBooks were fixed by Amazon. There are these things known as "other eBookstores" (e.g. Barnes & Noble Nook, Kobo and Sony Reader) that set their own prices for eBooks after paying the wholesale price for the eBook, just like Amazon.
There is clearly less pricing diversity after the agency model than before, where there is a single entity setting eBook prices on a book-by-book basis: the publisher.
Amazon and Apple own their stores. The publishers own their books. Freedom of association says they have the right to decide what terms to do business with each other. We have a long tradition market pricing in this country, where everyone competes for some mix of market share and profits.
There's no evidence that the 6 publishers and Apple have colluded to set prices, quite the opposite-- in the new model the prices are variable, whereas in the previous model, the prices were fixed by one agency: Amazon.
The real change here is that there is more competition. Before Amazon had essentially a monopoly on ebook sales, and after they have to compete with Apple.
As a result, Amazon may have been able to force prices to be lower by using the publisher's assets as leverage to sell more Kindles at publisher's expense.
But now that there's competition in the ebook store market, do you really think that more competition is going to result in higher prices over time?
Looking at other media sold online, over time the prices have come down (inflation adjusted.)
You might want to fix wholesale prices at $10, but in order to do that, you really would have to engage in price fixing of some sort. That info graphic shows that the cost distribution is different, and that difference is a strong argument for ebooks being cheaper to buy - but not for a specific model of selling them.