Why the Apple Agency Model is Good for Pirates and Self-Publishers
Published December 16th, 2011 | 
Mainstream publishers still don’t get it: book buyers do not want to pay more than $10 for an e-book. They are deluding themselves if they believe jacking-up ebook prices is a good idea. Higher ebook prices do not translate into more ebooks sales. And higher ebook prices are not exactly helping hardcover sales.
So who does benefit from the agency model? Well . . . digital pirates for one. Why pay $16 for a an ebook version of a bestselling book when you can download it for free on a torrent site? Sure, there will always be a market for pirated material, but most readers would pay for those books if the price was friendlier to consumers.
Second, self-publishers are also benefitting from the agency model. Readers looking for new books to read on their Kindle are going to be a bit more willing to try a new author selling an e-book for $1.99 than mainstream bestseller priced equal to or above the trade book price. Over the long haul, the more mainstream publisher fight for the agency model the more it will hurt them.
The Kindle Fire is Taking Fire
Published December 6th, 2011 | You wouldn’t ask a bookshelf speaker manufacturer what the the best bookshelf speakers are. Naturally, the manufacturer would claim that it made the best and would no so subtly suggest that its competition makes a lesser product. And so, you can pretty much trust that any pro-Apple content publisher online, will be slanted in favor of Apple and prejudiced against Apple’s competition.
Such is the case with Paid.org is notable for it’s negative stories about Amazon. Recently, Paid.org ran an article critiquing the Kindle Fire. The author took out-context excerpts from a report by usability expert, Jakob Nielsen, to make a case that the Kindle Fire is a piece of crap. Nielsen wasn’t so much critiquing the Kindle Fire device in his post, as he was highlighting a basic display problem when viewing full-page content on a small screen. His point is that most content is not designed to correctly display on a 7-inch tablet device. Of course he did point out that he thought the device was “too heavy,” but, given that his study was done with just 4 participants, one can hardly take his conclusions at face value. That didn’t stop the article’s author from using Nielsen’s conclusions to disparage the device. It’s notable that most of the comments disagreed with both Nielsen and the author of the article and were clearly smart enough to recognize the the bias:
Amazon Has Publishing Fire
Published December 6th, 2011 | You can almost set your citizen watch by it: Every Christmas season for the past several years, Amazon has had some major news to lay on its customers. This year is no different. First, Amazon cut prices on the Kindle and released the Kindle Fire. Now, they are in the process of acquiring Children’s Book Publisher, Marshall Cavendish to add to the growing list of imprints in the Amazon Publishing empire. Meanwhile, Apple and the big mainstream publishers are in hot water over the “Agency Model” for e-book publishing. EU watchdogs are investigating Apple, Hachette Livre, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Penguin and Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck for anti-trust violations. There’s No denying it. Amazon has made all they right decisions when it comes to advancing its publishing agenda.
