But Amazon pretty much, right now, has a monopoly on online bookselling. They’re huge. As a result, this becomes nearly a form of de facto price fixing.
This is not a reason to prefer Macmillan over Amazon. Amazon might arguably have something that is almost a monopoly on online bookselling, allowing them to de facto dictate the price of books purchased online (though not offline, except to the extent that price wars dictate that competitors charge less).
Macmillan has an actual monopoly, guaranteed by Congress, on producing Macmillan books. Macmillan is telling Amazon to engage in actual price fixing. Macmillan has told Amazon that if Amazon does not set their prices to exactly what Macmillan says they should be, when Macmillan says this should be, Macmillan will use its actual monopoly to forbid Amazon from distributing their books.
Macmillan is doing this to avoid channel conflict -- i.e. establish actual price fixing backed up by the power of law to forbid there to be price-based competition among the various outlets who sell their books.
It turns reality on its head to portray Macmillan as the pro-consumer champion of a vibrant, competitive market here.
At the same time, it also turns reality on its head to portray Amazon as being pro-consumer in this case (where's the good old Amazon that helped force Apple out of music DRM by launching Amazon MP3?). In this struggle, it seems that both sides are trying to price-fix, but to different prices, and without much concern for either the consumers or the authors that are so directly affected by their falling-out.
The question of which is ultimately better for the consumer is non-trivial to my mind. Not to mention that, because publishers tie author royalties to the physical cost of production, the authors stand to lose a lot in this struggle.
If something won't be profitable to make, it won't be made. The best price for the consumer is the lowest price at which the item desired by the consumer can still be produced.
If something can't be made it's price is infinity. If it's custom but possible to create it's price is high. If it's mass produced it's price drops. If it's pubic domain it's free.
PS: Saying people will not make it at some price just means it's actual price is higher.
My point with the parenthetical note is that Amazon is not acting in a consistent manner. With music, they trumpeted the virtues of going DRM-free and allowing for dynamic pricing, while with books, they're sticking to DRM and not allowing dynamic pricing.
As for price-fixing, if there were multiple vendors for e-books on Kindle readers, then yes, I would agree that Amazon is not at all price-fixing. Since they are, however, the sole provider of e-books for the Kindle (more or less-- you can convert other formats to Mobipocket with mixed results, and the Kindle 2 and DX versions have limited PDF support), their insistence on uniform e-book prices can reasonably be seen as a kind of price fixing. This is part of why I opined over at Chad Orzel's blog (http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/01/the_amazon_kerfuf...) that an upshot of this falling-out should be that in order to keep their platform viable, Amazon should drop DRM and support ePub or some other standard format. If they followed their own example of Amazon MP3, then they really would be consumer advocates by taking issue with Macmillan.
As Cory Doctrow points out, Amazon has not revealed exactly what they mean by DRM-free. Moreover, the difference is not labelled on the Kindle store for consumers to see. Thus, while it is absolutely true that the publishers deserve blame in this case, my point is that Amazon is not helping to kill DRM and make their platform open to non-Amazon sellers. Of course, the big difference between this and the Amazon MP3 store cases is that with the Kindle, Amazon makes the device.
"DRM-free" implies to me that I can use the download on any hardware that can play the format. IIRC, Amazon's "DRM-free" titles still carry a license that prohibits their use on any platform other than Kindle.
You have a guaranteed monopoly on the price of Bingo Card Creator. I am not sure you would appreciate it if Paypal/(Insert other card processors here) said that they will only let you sell via them if you sold it for 9.99$. I don't that not fair either. You should be free to set the price of your goods, it is not a question of pro-consumer, its a question of using near monopoly to get a power which the market enabler should not have.
(Sorry if the last para reads like a personal attack, as it uses a personal example. That is to use an example which you and other hacker news readers are familiar with.)
That's not really right, though. Amazon is a store. They should have the right to purchase books at the rate they can negotiate and sell the books for the price they feel the market can support.
MacMillan, on the other hand, is trying to force retailers like Apple and Amazon to sell them for the same price, eliminating competition and create artificially high prices (aka price fixing). And really, trying to argue that price fixing is good for consumers is a very difficult position to defend.
I am not arguing whether this is good for consumers or bad(I have no opinion/idea), I am arguing that "Goods producers" should have should have right to fix prices for their products.
I have trouble seeing Amazon a store for Kindle ebooks. In my worldview they are a middleman/affiliate/market creators. (keep no inventory, Publishers get paid after purchases etc.)
Good producers have a right to fix prices for their products. Stores have a right to refuse to stock items that it believes are too expensive. I don't see the problem here.
I don't see why you have any problem calling Amazon a store for Kindle ebooks when you're willing to see publishers as "goods producers". They're both essentially middle-men.
The producer is still setting a price and getting paid that price.
If you're saying that nobody should ever be able to resell at a different price, then you're outlawing free giveaways, promotions, markups, etc... basically neutering the whole "free market" concept.
This is not a reason to prefer Macmillan over Amazon. Amazon might arguably have something that is almost a monopoly on online bookselling, allowing them to de facto dictate the price of books purchased online (though not offline, except to the extent that price wars dictate that competitors charge less).
Macmillan has an actual monopoly, guaranteed by Congress, on producing Macmillan books. Macmillan is telling Amazon to engage in actual price fixing. Macmillan has told Amazon that if Amazon does not set their prices to exactly what Macmillan says they should be, when Macmillan says this should be, Macmillan will use its actual monopoly to forbid Amazon from distributing their books.
Macmillan is doing this to avoid channel conflict -- i.e. establish actual price fixing backed up by the power of law to forbid there to be price-based competition among the various outlets who sell their books.
It turns reality on its head to portray Macmillan as the pro-consumer champion of a vibrant, competitive market here.