雅思阅读材料之电子书行业太舒服了？.docxVIP

智课网IELTS备考资料雅思阅读材料之电子书行业太舒服了？ 出国英语考试有哪些 雅思6.5是什么水平 雅思阅读评分标准 托福阅读评分标准 雅思和托福的区别 THE price-fixing complaint that America’s Department of Justice (DoJ) filed this week against Apple and five of the world’s “Big Six” book publishers has a triumphalist tone, describing secret meetings in “upscale Manhattan restaurants”. But it seems to take a rather narrow view of what is going on in the e-book industry. 本周，美国司法部（Doj）以密谋垄断电子书价格的罪名起诉苹果公司和全球六大书籍出版商中的五家，称相关人士在“曼哈顿的高级餐厅”内进行秘密会谈。对这件案，美国司法部有必胜的把握。但以这样的眼光看待电子书行业现状似乎太过狭隘了。 Until two years ago Amazon, the dominant player in the market thanks to its Kindle e-reader, kept publishers on the “wholesale model” for e-books. This let them set the wholesale price but let Amazon sell the books at a loss, making it harder for newer e-reader makers such as Barnes Noble to challenge its near-monopoly. That made for cheap e-books, competing against the print versions. Publishers and authors also feared that if Amazon remained dominant, it would eventually impose lower wholesale prices on them too, forcing weaker publishers and other booksellers out of business. They were therefore delighted when Apple, on launching the iPad in 2010, offered them an “agency model”, whereby they set the retail prices and give the retailer a fixed cut. 直至2年前，凭借Kindle电子阅读器雄霸电子书市场的亚马逊仍一直让出版商们以“批发模式”出售电子书。在此模式下，出版商能够制定批发价，但亚马逊却能以低于成本价出售电子书，如此一来那些新兴的电子阅读器制造商（如Barnes Noble）就更难挑战几乎垄断电子书市场的亚马逊了。“批发模式”压低了电子书的价格，使之能与实体书进行竞争。出版商和作家们也担心如果亚马逊一直雄霸电子书市场，最终就会强迫他们接受更低的批发价，迫使实力较弱的出版商和其他书商退出这个行业。于是当苹果公司（在2010年推出IPAD）为他们推出“代理模式”（即由出版商和书商来定零售价并给零售商一个固定的折扣）时，他们感到非常高兴。 Amazon later offered the same terms to big publishers, though not to smaller ones, and the prices of many e-books rose. The DoJ says this came about through deliberate collusion between Apple and five of the Big Six. (Random House, which joined the iBookstore later, isn’t included.) 后来亚马逊也向大型出版商提供同样的经销模式，不过较小的出版商就无此待遇，许多电子书的价格因此上涨了。美国司法部说出现这种局面是因为苹果与六大出版商中的五家相互串通。（其中并不包括后来并入苹果线上书店（iBookstore）的兰登书屋