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E-books: A Tale of Digital Disruption

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  • Gilbert, Richard J

Abstract

E-book sales surged after Amazon introduced the Kindle e-reader at the end of 2007 and accounted for about one quarter of all trade book sales by the end of 2013. Amazon's aggressive (low) pricing of e-books led to allegations that e-books were bankrupting brick and mortar book booksellers. Amazon's commanding position as a bookseller also raises concerns about monopoly power, and publishers are concerned about Amazon's power to displace them in the book value chain. I find little evidence that e-books are primarily responsible for the decline of independent booksellers. I also conclude that entry barriers are not sufficient to allow Amazon to set monopoly prices. Publishers are at risk from Amazon's monopsony (buyer) power and so sought “agency” pricing in an effort to raise the price of ebooks, promote retail competition, and reduce Amazon's influence as an e-retailer. (In the agency pricing model, the publisher specifies the retail price with a commission for the retailer. In a traditional, “wholesale” pricing model, publishers sell a book to retailers at a wholesale price and retailers set the retail price.) Although agency pricing was challenged by the Department of Justice, it may yet prevail in some form as an equilibrium pricing model for e-book sales.

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  • Gilbert, Richard J, 2015. "E-books: A Tale of Digital Disruption," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt0wg6v2r6, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt0wg6v2r6
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Oecd, 2012. "E-books: Developments and Policy Considerations," OECD Digital Economy Papers 208, OECD Publishing.
    2. Oystein Foros & Hans Jarle Kind & Greg Shaffer, 2013. "Turning the Page on Business Formats for Digital Platforms: Does Apple's Agency Model Soften Competition?," CESifo Working Paper Series 4362, CESifo.
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    Cited by:

    1. David Soto Setzke & Tobias Riasanow & Markus Böhm & Helmut Krcmar, 2023. "Pathways to Digital Service Innovation: The Role of Digital Transformation Strategies in Established Organizations," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(3), pages 1017-1037, June.
    2. Constantatos, Christos & Pinopoulos, Ioannis N., 2023. "Optimal tariffs with uncertainty and downstream fixed costs," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    3. Yuta Kittaka & Noriaki Matsushima & Fuyuki Saruta, 2021. "Competition between physical and electronic content retailers," ISER Discussion Paper 1123, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    4. Inderst, Roman & Griem, Fabian & Schaffer, Greg, 2022. "Tying under Double-Marginalization," CEPR Discussion Papers 17314, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Hviid, Morten & Izquierdo Sanchez, Sofia & Jaques, Sabine, 2016. "From publishers to self-publishing: The disruptive effects of digitalisation on the book industry," MPRA Paper 76057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Emmanuel Petrakis & Panagiotis Skartados, 2022. "First-mover advantage reversals under passive cross forward ownership in vertically related markets," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(2), pages 303-311, October.
    7. Evensen, Charlotte B. & Foros, Øystein & Haugen, Atle & Kind, Hans Jarle, 2021. "Size-based input price discrimination under endogenous inside options," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 6/2021, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    8. Dimitrios VALSAMIDIS & Dimosthenis PAPPAS & Vasilios FERELIS & Michael NIKOLAIDIS, 2018. "Best Strategies For The Ideal Business Model," Scientific Bulletin - Economic Sciences, University of Pitesti, vol. 17(1), pages 24-38.
    9. Zhang, Yanfang, 2020. "When should firms choose a risky new technology? An oligopolistic analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 687-693.
    10. Búi K Petersen & James Chowhan & Gordon B Cooke & Ray Gosine & Peter J Warrian, 2023. "Automation and the future of work: An intersectional study of the role of human capital, income, gender and visible minority status," Economic and Industrial Democracy, Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden, vol. 44(3), pages 703-727, August.
    11. Hui Li, 2019. "Intertemporal Price Discrimination with Complementary Products: E-Books and E-Readers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2665-2694, June.
    12. Silvi Berger & Morten Hviid, 2019. "Who Should Set Book Prices?," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2019-07, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    13. Faherty, Emily & Huang, Kevin & Land, Robert, 2017. "The Amazon Monopoly: Is Amazon’s Private Label Business the Tipping Point?," MPRA Paper 83672, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Yinliang (Ricky) Tan & Janice E. Carrillo, 2017. "Strategic Analysis of the Agency Model for Digital Goods," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 26(4), pages 724-741, April.
    15. Edona Reshidi, 2022. "Vertical Bargaining and Obfuscation," Staff Working Papers 22-13, Bank of Canada.
    16. Jeon, Doh-Shin & Menicucci, Domenico, 2019. "On the unprofitability of buyer groups when sellers compete," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 265-288.
    17. Maximilian Maurice Gail & Phil-Adrian Klotz, 2021. "The Impact of the Agency Model on E-book Prices: Evidence from the UK," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202111, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    18. Hui Li, 2021. "Are e-books a different channel? Multichannel management of digital products," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 179-225, June.
    19. Reinares-Lara, Pedro & Martín-Santana, Josefa D., 2019. "Managing point of purchase advertising: Effectiveness in terms of recall and recognition," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 289-296.
    20. Paul Crosby, 2019. "Don’t judge a book by its cover: examining digital disruption in the book industry using a stated preference approach," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 43(4), pages 607-637, December.
    21. Papadopoulos, Konstantinos G. & Petrakis, Emmanuel & Skartados, Panagiotis, 2021. "The ambiguous competitive effects of passive partial forward integration," UC3M Working papers. Economics 33354, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    22. Kittaka, Yuta & Matsushima, Noriaki & Saruta, Fuyuki, 2022. "Negative effect of price-matching policy on traditional retailers in a dual-channel supply chain with different content formats," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    23. Pinopoulos, Ioannis N., 2019. "On the welfare effects of vertical integration: Opportunism vs. double marginalization," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 169-172.
    24. Suchita Jha, 2021. "Crossword: At the Crossroad," FIIB Business Review, , vol. 10(2), pages 114-117, June.
    25. Georg Goetz & Daniel Herold & Phil-Adrian Klotz & Jan Thomas Schaefer, 2020. "The Substitutability between Brick-and-Mortar Stores and e-Commerce - The Case of Books," MAGKS Papers on Economics 202011, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).

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