Armina Ligaya at the Financial Post reports about Kobo, Inc.’s successful request for a temporary stay in the implementation of retail ebook discount policies in Canada.
Kobo challenge to e-book ruling delays Competition Bureau’s move to reduce prices
ePublish Yourself Intelligence
Armina Ligaya reports:
- Moves to reduce ebook prices in Canada (by the Competition Bureau) have been postponed because of a challenge by Toronto-based Kobo, Inc.
- Restrictions on retail discounting were due to take effect on March 19th
- Kobo argued that it would “suffer significant unrecoverable losses”
- Earlier, on February 7th, the Competition Bureau struck an agreement with Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon Schuster to scrap distribution agreements that prohibited discounting
- Kobo is concerned that Amazon would gain a monopoly (or near-monopoly) in ebooks in Canada, pointing to heavy loses by Barnes & Noble (in the U.S.) and an exit from the market by Sony
ePublish Yourself! is watching this very closely
The ability for retailers to discount manufacturer-suggested prices is a fundamental principal of market competition, so it would seem easy to come out against Kobo (which is essentially arguing that publishers and distributors should keep the right to set prices for digital goods). However, the alternative of allowing an oversized competitor to undercut any and all prices (as Amazon has demonstrated the willingness to do) is also, by it’s very nature, anti-competitive.
ePublish Yourself encourages indie-authors and epublishers to watch this issue closely since it is unclear which direction offers the best future opportunities for authors and the book publishing industry in general.