Talk:Net Book Agreement

Legality

the irony is, that the NBA from what i understand from reading the FTCs website would not be illegal here in the us

"Q: I own a small jewelry store and the manufacturer of TimeCo brand watches recently dropped me as a dealer. I’m sure it’s because my competitors complained that I sell below the suggested retail price. The explanation was the manufacturer’s policy: its products should not be sold below the suggested retail price, and dealers who do not comply are subject to termination. Is it legal for the manufacturer to dictate my prices?

A: The law allows a manufacturer to have a policy that its dealers should sell a product above a certain minimum price, and to terminate dealers that do not honor that policy. Manufacturers may choose to adopt this kind of policy because it encourages dealers to provide full customer service and prevents other dealers, who may not provide full service, from taking away customers and "free riding" on the services provided by other dealers. If TimeCo got you to agree to maintain the suggested retail price, it would be illegal. It also would be illegal if TimeCo agreed with your competitors to drop you as a dealer to help maintain a price to which they had agreed. However, a complaint from a competing retailer is not sufficient to prove such an agreement, because the manufacturer may have decided independently that its interests were better served by sticking with its policy. "

Balance

The whole "The collapse of the Agreement..." paragraph seems to be POV-pushing. It is also entirely unsourced and is selective with the facts. For example, stating that it strengthens large chains is one thing, but it does not state specifically that that strength comes from weakening smaller chains and independent stores. Similarly it states that prices have reduced. Personally, I don't see this. If you want to go out and buy a book then yes, you can buy whatever is on offer at the time and it will be cheap. If you want to go out and buy a particular book then if it is popular fiction or some other book that sells a reasonable number of copies it will be about the same in relative terms. If you want to buy technical or specialist book it will be a lot more expensive that it was previously. One of the motivations behind the net book agreement was that expensive technical books were subsidised to some extent by the more popular titles. The section at the moment addresses none of this, and reads as if it has been written by someone with an absolute belief in the free market: the Net Book Agreement was a terrible idea simply on ideological grounds. CrispMuncher (talk) 20:04, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You have a fair point. The idea that the NBA increases blockbusters' prices and decreases non-blockbusters' is supported by Fishwick (2005), among others. However, you may also want to read Canoy et al (2006) in Handbook of the Economics of Arts and Culture and Ringstad (2004) for a more balanced assessment. Fishwick (2005) notices that the figures about bookshops are to be taken with great care, a bookshop not being a well-defined statistical category. I am currently working on a (hopefully) thorough review of the available literature, to be published soon (but in French). I plan editing the article on fr: anytime after that. Bokken | 木刀 20:53, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

The BBC story that is cited as reference three gives a pretty good account of the recent history of the book trade, in my opinion. I think the fact cited that 500 bookshops closed shows very well that there was an impact on independent booksellers (I accept Bokken's caveat but I'm looking at the 500 bookshops line as part of the neutrality of the piece). As it stands, I read that par and see the impact of the collapse of the NBA as making supermarkets richer and screwing independent bookshops. Which is what happened, surely? Twistedhack (talk) 16:43, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

According the a recent report from the University of East Anglia Competition Office, this is only part of the story. According to their measurements, the closing down of small bookshops was offset later by entry of larger and more effective chain booksellers, with a larger stock and a better stock management. Entry by supermarkets played a role, but large chain and internet sellers cannot be discarded either. Report is here. The open question is twofold: why should less efficient independent bookshops be subsidised by the State of the rest of the book inudstruy? If yes, is the FBP the best way to do it? In an academic paper (forthcoming), I argue that the answer to the first question may be yes, but that the FBP is not the best tool any more.

On a side note, the figure of 500 closed shops is not informative. Many small-scale businesses have faced tough times during that period, and it is not clear that 500 is a large figure compared with music sellers or groceries. Bokken | 木刀 11:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

NBA and FBP

Okay, after seriouly messing the history of this page (sorry), I think that the article Fixed Book Price Agreement should be created alongside the current article. The NBA is the British flavour of the FBP, and much of the content here refers only to the British case. Please add Fixed Book Price Agreement to your whatchlist if you happen to be interested by this subject. Bokken | 木刀 09:46, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Consider

Propping up one thing at the expense of something else begs the following question;

Q: Is the thing that needs propping up worth propping up?

A [| recent report] suggested that subsidies on fishing are actually counter productive. Why would subsidies on books (Charging extra for some to enable a reduced price on others) not have the same overall effect?

EG:

500 book-shops closed following the collapse of the agreement, resulting in 1,500 people losing their jobs.

10,000 other locations (super-markets etc) started selling books (when before they did not) and employed an additional 2,000 staff (one new staff member per 5 supermarkets) across the board. Net result, 500 new jobs.

I do not Know the answers. The picture is too "big" and the data too limited such that is is probably not possible to say if the agreement was good, bad, or indifferent. All one can do is look as other similar agreements where the data is better known, and infer from it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BernieDog (talk • contribs) 12:36, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a huge difference between fishing subsidies and the NBA. The fishing industry is subsidised from outside - i.e. the government or the European Union. By contrast, the NBA was a cross-subsidy entirely internal to book publishing - publishers did not receive money from elsewhere other than in normal sales. --Redrose64 (talk) 14:34, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

An academic attempt at answering that question is available here (pdf, Office of Fair Trading). Shorter: the end of the NBA allowed entry by more productive and innovative players, to such an exetent that gains outweight losses in the small-scale bookshop sector. Bokken | 木刀 16:32, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

removing POV tag with no active discussion per Template:POV

I've removed an old neutrality tag from this page that appears to have no active discussion per the instructions at Template:POV:

This template is not meant to be a permanent resident on any article. Remove this template whenever:

1. There is consensus on the talkpage or the NPOV Noticeboard that the issue has been resolved
2. It is not clear what the neutrality issue is, and no satisfactory explanation has been given
3. In the absence of any discussion, or if the discussion has become dormant.

Since there's no evidence of ongoing discussion, I'm removing the tag for now. If discussion is continuing and I've failed to see it, however, please feel free to restore the template and continue to address the issues. Thanks to everybody working on this one! -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:41, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

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