Online retailing giant Amazon caved to book publisher Macmillan over the weekend, first pulling then restoring their catalog in a dispute over e-book pricing. Not too surprising.
But what really struck me was the statement Amazon issued Sunday afternoon in announcing their capitulation:
“We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books,”
Really? Macmillan has a “monopoly” over their own titles? Isn’t that kinda like saying that McDonald’s has a monopoly over its own burgers, or that, say, Amazon has a monopoly over the sale of its own Kindle devices?
It is a rather startling implication — that there is something wrong with a publisher maintaining monopoly control over its own titles — but not as purely silly or resentful as it may first appear. The sale of goods and e-goods are not the same thing, and this shift away from physical media to online distribution may in fact demand a dramatic rethinking of the traditional relationship between content creators, owners and resellers.
And it will be fascinating to watch how this all works out.
Apple devotees are truly loyal. Now that they have announced theirs, Amazon can no longer maintain their price. So now we pay $16 instead of $10 for an electronic book that CANNOT be shared, passed on, resold, put on the shelf and looked at 25 years later (nothing on a personal electronic device archives well) Or alternatively bought used a few months later for a few dollars.
No Thanks – I will continue using the library.
The comparison of publishers to burger joints isn’t really accurate. Burgers are pretty generic. If I’m Burger King, I can come out with something very, very close to a Big Mac. I can’t call it a “Big Mac”, but there are many Big Mac equivalents for sale. Book titles are unique. Old titles in the public domain may be available from multiple publishers, but new titles are typically only available from a single publisher. Single seller == monopoly.
How is this Apple’s fault? That they can get a better price on ebooks for their splendid new device, so one of their vendors decides that the price works for all ereaders? Capitalism at work, you bloody commies.
Apple also is responsible for keeping online music prices at a somewhat reasonable level, at least keeping them lower than the short-sighted RIAA members wanted to charge.
Of course, costs are quite reasonable for CDs checked out from the library.
Mega publishers do have effective monopolies. That is OK, but what is not OK is that the wholesaler should be able to control the retail price. If Amazon can sell a McMillion book for 10 that costs Amazon 11, THAT decision should be up to Amazon.
But then .. remember Goldy is an acolyte of the Apple cult.
I should add “Hooray for the public reading and listening option!”
Socialism also works just fine for the military, police, fire, waste disposal, copywrite, patent, hiways, air traffic control, and I get tired here; what is so damn wrong about socialized medicine?
SJ, blame MacMillan, it’s their demand, not Apple’s. If Apple customers feel more inclined to pay creators of ideas and musings, fine, it’s a free country and a free market after all, right? If a merchant that had a stronghold on your market was dumping your product for less than market value and telling you to take or leave it, and you said fine, I’ll go Galt, that’s cultish? You may have a point there.
So, the capitalists at Amazon feel they are entitled to Macmillan’s intellectual property on Amazon’s terms? Do as we say, not as we do….
Well, technically Amazon is correct. MacMillan does have a monopoly over their own titles, but it’s not because they have some nefarious scheme to corner the market. It’s a perfectly legal monopoly because they own the copyrights. That’s what copyright law does–it gives the owner of the copyright an exclusive right to make and distribute copies of the works.
@1 If you feel compelled to give Apple $500, to hell with the iPad, get a couple shares of their stock instead.
@3 “at least keeping them lower than the short-sighted RIAA members wanted to charge”
Last I heard, their lawyers were charging about $225,000 for downloading songs.
@9
With all the naysayers on the nets since the announcement, I would assume that Apple’s short options market is booming.
@RR#10- yeah, that’s why no one is downloading free music, movies, software, or any other commercial digital content anymore.
C’mon, Bunny, you’re sharper than that.
6. Mark Centz
It seems to me that in a free market the retailer and the vendor would decide what the vendor would be paid. Then the retailer should be free to figure out what she wants to get paid.
Price fixing, whether in the name of copyright or any other name undermines the free market.
If Apple is willing to pay more than Amazon is, that is fine by me, but neither Amazon nor Apple ought ot be able to determine what the other charges for some book published by McMillions.
Frankly, I think the publishers themselves may be on the cusp of historicity. In an era where a book can be set from Word and robots can do a lot of copy checking why should the McMillians and Efsaziers control copyrights at all?
Seems to em that all these folks do is market their own control of what is sold. W/o the excuse of a need to put ink on paper, how can they justifty 900% markup on what the author gets?
@13 SJ- it seems that Apple’s marketplace arrangement comes close to meeting with your splendid approval. At the outset, the publishers choose their own sale price to a ceiling of $15, Apple taking 30% as their cut. It might be thought that after the market has been established that the ceiling will be raised or even removed. Thus, customers, vendors, and merchant alike have a say in the transaction.
Salon has a short but worthwhile look at this situation, including Amazon’s outlook. I regret not being able to use the embedded link function from my iPhone –
http://www.salon.com/technolog....._vs_amazon
Ayn Rand’s followup to Atlas Shrugged is the story of an orphan genius with little patience with fools or mediocrity who founds a vast commercial empire and transforms the way the world communicated with itself. It was never published because as writer’s charactors so often do, this titan did not behave and turned out to be a liberal. And everyone thought she simply gave up writing.