Picture this: You buy a bookcase in a furniture store. The rack is practical and pretty, but has a hook. From now on you may buy your books only with this furniture dealer. And you may keep the books on the shelf in that no other place. And if you replace after a few years the old shelf by a new one, you have to throw away all the books.
An absurd scenario? Not at all. Only the attempt to transfer the business model of Amazon’s Kindle eReader to the analog world. The closed system of the online bookseller, the Kindle owner extremely tight binding to the storefront Amazon, for example, does not allow them electronic books to buy outside of the Amazon cosmos or to play once purchased content to other devices, not only the competition is a thorn in the eye.
The Association of German Book Trade sees this as a deliberate strategy of monopoly. After all, the German e-book industry is now clearly dominated by Amazon. According to a study by the market research company, the company is at 41 percent market share. A case for the Cartel
Skipis Alexander, chief executive of the Booksellers Association, confirmed that currently would be considered all legal options. “If Amazon has a dominant position in the e-book field, then this closed system could possibly be anti-trust law. This is what we can investigate by legal experts. “Should the lawyers come to a positive result, the stock market club will make an application to the Cartel.
Kampa A saga of David to Goliath
it comes to the enforcement of more systemic openness, “Interoperability” is the technical word. Greater permeability for eReader, more freedom of choice for e-book buyers. It was a German single-handedly, a significant challenge from David to Goliath.
For Booksellers Association, which represents the interests of 5,500 publishers, bookstores, antique shops and intermediate bookstores, it’s about more than the outbraking an annoying American competitors, who also in the sale of printed books has a huge share of the German book market. Exact figures are not available, Amazon itself does not publish. “Amazon is acting like an autistic person in our market,” says Skipis. What is known is that the Internet book sales total last year was delighted to receive an increase of more than 10 percent, while the stationary trading 3.7 percent suffered losses. Meanwhile, 16.5 percent of the entire book trade sales are generated in the network.
But it is not only the starving small bookshops that make the industry worried. It is also important that Amazon stands for poor working conditions and sclerosed inner cities. And that the company that has put its European headquarters to low-tax Luxembourg, Germany pays no taxes. “All of these things are in my view, is reason enough to deal critically with this company,” says Skipis. “But the key point is that the system as it operates Amazon will make a grown bookstores structure broken.”, The German book market is a worldwide benchmark, not only for its size but also in terms of quality and diversity. “This is an achievement that should be preserved.”
Amazon is expanding its product range further and further from his own novel
danger, so it looks Booksellers Association, is to increase the power of a single player. If only a majority of books on a single dealer sells, then the rest of the industry lightly impose its conditions. While Amazon may be cheaper than the competition because of the existing offer in Germany book price books. But the company could – and does so well already – by publishers increasingly Shopping Discounts and thus increase its profit margins
.
In the U.S., Amazon has now established a number of self-publishers, taken hundreds of authors under contract and the rights to bestsellers such as Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels secured. Also in Germany to build the in-house range from novel ever. Many e-book authors now publish on Amazon without a publisher is interposed. Usually the texts from the entertainment genre come, they are often be very cheap in the Kindle Store. It is a promising growth sector: in 2012 made e-books while only 2.4 percent of the total German book market, but the curve goes up. In the U.S., the share of e-books has risen to around 25 percent.
that the fears of the German book market could undergo similar processes of concentration in the coming years as the U.S., not only culturally pessimistic murmurings seen in the current debate about the free trade agreement between the EU and the USA. Only France has so far insisted that cultural goods are excluded from this Agreement, the federal government has a different view. The negotiations for the agreement will probably still take one to two years, but books should be affected by the free trade agreement at the end, that could be the end of the German book price fixing, the Skipis referred to as “flanking protection measure”. The measure will, among other things, that small bookshops are not in a price competition with large chain stores. Under free market conditions, they would never survive the.
The book price is at stake
However, should the U.S. and the lobbyists for the American Internet companies prevail in Brussels, the book prices could soon be a European obsolescence. Ironically, the “Washington Post” has pointed out one day after its sale to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Amazon’s lobbying activities in the U.S.. Also in Europe, you realize that long. “American Internet companies make a considerable pressure in Brussels,” says Skipis.
the book market would develop in the long term without protection? Skipis refers to Great Britain. There, the same phenomenon could be observed as in the U.S.: “In countries which do not have fixed prices, disappear not only smaller bookstores and small and medium-sized publishers. Prices also vary. The best sellers are sold cheap at hardware stores and gas stations. All the other books are more expensive. “
But it does not have to come. Now appears to grow at least at the bibliophile consumer skepticism about Amazon. In the industry, there are rumors that the sales that Amazon made in Germany with books for some time, are clearly reversed. From 15 to 20 percent is the question.
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