The leftist part of me tends to overlook the "competing" bit. My actual politics (as in, how I vote) is far more realistic about the world we live in compared with me 'if only' politics that leave me sketching out vague sequels to Utopia in the knowledge that People Don't Work That Way. In my ideal world, there are lots of little niche publishers, none of which are publically traded* and all of which make enough money from their loyal customers to survive using the current business model predominant among epresses. In the real world, I acknowledge that large publishers often put out superior products, and that for any publisher the bottom line is the profit margin and to make ends meet sometimes corners will be cut and invoices only paid on final demands. I acknowledge the difference, but it doesn't mean I have to like it
The thing about the Agency Model is that though it may be legal in the US (
for now), in many other countries it isn't. As a non-US customer, I'm already frustrated when I encounter ebooks I can't buy because the rights for countries other than the US haven't been purchased, or because something is out of copyright in the country the retailer is based in but not in the UK. When you add to that the fact that some of the big publishers are now forced to follow different pricing structures in different countries, the whole system teeters on being too complicated to follow. How does one comparison shop in a market where half the publishers have 'come to an agreement' on pricing? The iBooks store is half empty and Amazon are only just launching a UK Kindle store this month despite trying to flog me a Kindle for over a year.
Google Books fell foul of the same problem when they tried to grab all those orphan works; they're another US business with a strong internet presence that overlooked the fact that the internet is international. I mean, is it legal for me to comparison shop for ebooks between Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk? What are the tax implications of that? What if a US customer were to do the same and buy books from Agency publishers in countries where the agency agreement doesn't stand?
I don't think Amazon's stranglehold on the market is a good thing, and if the Agency model helps relax it, then that's a definite positive. But I object to the pricing of ebooks as comparable to hardbacks, because I'm not receiving the same rights for my money. With a print book you have the right to sell the book on; with an ebook you obviously don't. It's not a huge thing, but add it to the fact that under cloud models like Amazon's you're only leasing the book in the first place I can't see why I should pay that much for something I don't even own. And especially not where I see epresses offering products of similar quality for half the price.
This is me-the-customer thinking here, not me-the-writer or me-the-overly-interested-in-the-nitty-gritty-of-publishing. It's instinctive. I wouldn't want to pay as much for a paperback as I would a hardback, and I definitely don't want to pay as much for an ebook. The publishing industry has worked very hard to convince me that hardbacks are a luxury item, good quality and high priced, to be purchased only on rare occasions (well, they probably weren't aiming for 'rare occasions', but some of those hardbacks cost as much as my week's food budget). The computing industry has worked hard to convince me electronic goods aren't as valuable or reliable as physical, that they are cheaper due to the lack of paper/real estate/equipment/employees and require regular backups on multiple devices**. Many industries are trying to overcome this perception now, but the problem remains that as long as there are niche publishers selling good quality books cheaper and cheerfully surviving then it's hard for me-the-customer to accept that the big publishers can't do the same. I have a basic understanding of why, but that doesn't make me feel charitable enough to actually buy their books.
It's like the newspapers trying to erect paywalls when there's free sources of news online. Sure, I admire The Times and appreciate its history. I might pick up a paper occasionally. Am I going to pay for it online? Not when I can get the same news for free from the BBC. I like The Times, but not that much.
I don't know if publishing can overcome this perception. I know that part of the Agency model is about preventing it growing any stronger as new customers enter the ebook market. Fair enough. They're under no obligation to favour early adopters over customers-to-be, and I'm under no obligation to ensure they and their business models survive the recession. What concerns me is if they buy up the small epresses, then they will come under the business models of the big publishers, and I won't be able to afford their ebooks either.
*several companies I admired and patronised made some, IMO, bad decisions once becoming publically traded as the new drive to increase profits alienated their loyal customers. Because there's nothing like driving your original paying customers away in an attempt to attact new ones to increase your profits.
**the computing industry has failed to convince me cloud computing is a remotely good idea. Sorry, but you can't spend the better part of two decades selling me floppies and CDs and pen drives and external harddrives only to tell me I should trust some server on another continent. It makes a nice additional way of backing stuff up, but it's not something I'd trust as my sole source of data.