By Stephen Windwalker
Posted 11.01.2010
Say it ain’t so, High street! Or, perhaps, won’t you share some of that stuff you’re smoking?
Alas, barely two months after Amazon launched its Kindle UK website, dinosaur-brained traditional publishers have apparently established a beachhead for the so-called “agency model” price-fixing scheme, devised early this year in cahoots with anti-consumer genius Steve Jobs, in the UK Kindle Store.
When five of the Big Six traditional publishers imposed the agency model on the US Kindle store, their goal was to raise US ebook prices by 30 to 50 per cent. In the UK, it appears that the effect of the anti-consumer scheme may be to double or triple existing prices for many of the titles that, at least up until now, have been bestsellers.
All over the UK Kindle site as of today, would-be readers are treated to a “This price was set by the publisher” tagline on ebooks published by Hachette, Penguin and HarperCollins before they go on to other titles in a search for good affordable reading.
UK citizens have long been thought of as being savvy, even class-conscious consumers, and it will be interesting to see how they respond to this erect middle finger from some publisher. For early indications, see the “Big price rises for ebooks” thread on the UK Amazon site.
Early on, we can see that these agency model publishers have a special genius — if little actual experience — for setting retail prices. They apparently believe they can get £12.99 — which exchanges for $20.84 American — for many new releases in the Kindle Store.
Or, more likely, they believe they can keep their print publishing businesses from flatlining by gouging ebook customers.
Good luck with that, eh?
As of noon Eastern seaboard time, only two of the top 10 bestsellers in the UK Kindle Store came from these greedy agency model schemers, er, publishers.
