The agency model isn't the problem here- and in itself it's a good idea, which works well for independents. The elephant in the room is the greedy publishers who are blackmailing book retailers with the threat of removal of sales rights.

I would urge any authors to have a long hard think about just what their publisher is doing for them for their cut, particularly in the context of an eBook publication.

Neil.

This was always going to happen . This is the E-NBA, and the NBA was a publishers restriction as well. This Agency Pricing Scheme is in the publisher's interest and not the consumers'. As I have said from the start the market in it's various forms will not stand for this .

Can't help thinking that if the retailers bought the content from the publishers at a set price, say £3 per copy per title on a £7.99 book - ie, less than half-price, instead of insisting on taking a huge percentage of the sale price and also setting that price themselves, the retailers could charge whatever they fancied. Instead, they are claiming the moral high ground and pretending they have the customers' best interests at heart. Anyone who believes the retailers are standing up for the customers rather than themselves should have their heads examined.

Publishers need to stand up and say sorry, none of us are offering massive discounts to retailers any more, and have the OFT examine the fairness of having Amazon, Tesco etc insisting on such massive discounts. Instead, they have shot themselves in the foot by getting involved in a ridiculous emotive struggle over e-book pricing.

Anonymous, you are just advocating another set of rules to fix the market with a £3 max price . Rather Soviet in style . Let the market vote with its consumer pound it will bring the consumer cost down as it has for printed books . Publishers have been in a strategic mess on E books from the start , affording at one stage massive royalty % on digital sales. Get a grip or the punter will do it for you .

JLC objects to "tree books"? It's a lot shorter to write than "paperbacks and hardbacks" and is perfectly clear what is meant. "ebooks" is in common use, should people say "electronic books" instead?

"Books" includes electronic books. You can't compare electronic books with something that includes electronic books, that's silly.

We, the readers, like the terms 'tree books' and 'ebooks' to differentiate between the two. What would you publishers like to do? Make an Agency Law that forbids us using 'tree books?

We are supposedly in a 'free market' and companies know that they can't 'fix' prices and just expect that people will pay. We won't! Has any publisher tried to see how many sales are lost because where we find 'price fixed by the publisher' we don't buy.

It is not our fault that publishers shoved their heads in the sand and hoped ebooks would not take off. It has been coming for years and they are now hopping from one foot to the other trying to find a way to stifle competitive pricing.

And if there is anything that is fueling piracy it is prices of the top authors books. At this very moment there are 18 John Grisham ebooks on a cd available on Amazon for £6. Will I buy them? No. They are illegal. But someone will......

'We, the readers'! Have you any idea how ridiculous you sound? You speak for the readers of the world, do you? Jog on.

By JLC's Left Plum. So who are you? You haven't actually said anything. Apart from attack those of us who are obviously not publishers, just the poor punters.

So come on, who are you?