![]() From a distance this looks competitive, but the devil is in the small print to get the 30% rate, you have to agree that Amazon is a publisher, license your rights to Amazon to publish through the Kindle platform, guarantee that you will not allow other ebook editions to sell for less than the Kindle price, and let Amazon set that price, with a ceiling of $9.99. Just before Apple announced the iPad and the agency deal for ebooks, Amazon pre-empted by announcing an option for publishing ebooks in which they would graciously reduce their cut from 70% to 30%, "same as Apple". According to author Charles Stross, Amazon is already trying to match Apple's 30 percent take, but with a few strings: The fact that they could get a better deal from Apple only helped clinch the deal. Independents will realize that if the big names can get more, the dynamics of what is "customary" for the industry has just shifted. Seeing a competitor get a few more dollars on the top end while giving less up to the retailer means they'll be asking for, and getting, the same. All these companies are hurting for revenue and profits. ![]() Make no mistake, this was a huge loss for Amazon and the talk of other publishers staying the course is bravado. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative. We don't believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it's reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. 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. We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. ![]() Pulling the Macmillan books off the system was a bluff, only this time a publisher called. How do I know that this isn't just wishful thinking? Because Amazon, whose management is generally very smart, just folded. The perception of universal access to any media becomes one of its major selling points. If an Amazon threatens to pull a company off its listings, the company might well say, "Go right ahead." Ultimately, it's Amazon that feels the pain when it cannot sell popular items that its customers want to buy. Since then, FTC lawyers have homed in on aspects of the investigation involving Amazon Web Services, the company’s lucrative cloud computing business, and more recently the $8.45-billion MGM acquisition.Another way of saying this is that publishers are business animals with their backs up against the wall and little to lose. The report became public in October 2020, but by last summer the FTC investigation hadn’t broken any new ground from what had been outlined in the report, two of the people said.Īfter taking over the agency, Khan helped draft some lines of questioning for investigators, one of the people said. ![]() Khan focused on the Google section of what eventually became the panel’s 449-page report, while an FTC staffer led the Amazon portion. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.ĭuring the administration of President Trump, the FTC opted to prioritize an antitrust investigation into Facebook and assigned only two lawyers to the Amazon one, two of the people said.īefore joining the FTC from Columbia Law School, Khan worked as a staffer for the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee that had spent 16 months investigating Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon, Apple Inc. The agency declined to comment on the reorganization.
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