Ever since the agency model first appeared in early 2010 we’ve been writing about some of the unanticipated effects of that shift, and today we turn our attention to another previously overlooked ramification: what agency does to retailer accounting. In public Amazon opposed the agency model on behalf of protecting their power to price ebooks and offer discounts to their customers. But agency has an important accounting impact as well. For regular/wholesale ebook sales, Amazon books the full value of what the consumer pays. But for agency ebooks, under standard accounting rules the company only books the commission they receive […]
