Kobo weighs in on the shift towards the "Agency" model

Michael Tamblyn, blogging for Kobo carves out a list of seven simple ideas that he feels are important to both Kobo and their customers:

1. eBooks are the future.
2. eBooks should be priced less than their physical counterparts.
3. eBooks should be released simultaneously with their printed counterparts.
4. eBook list prices should be set by the publisher or author.
5. Retailers should, as they always have, be able to drive sales and reward customers.
6. $9.99 is not the only price.
7. A locked-in book is a less valuable book.

Reading just the tag lines for their seven points you might come across with the idea that they largely are more on the side of Macmillan than Amazon in this dispute, although they don't come out and take a side per-say. It makes a lot of sense to me that they would side this way - nobody wants to sell books at a loss when you have no hardware or other lines of business on the back end to support you. It's not a loss leader if it's 80% of your sales, and I suspect that bestseller's are a huge part of regular Kobo sales. I can't imagine they enjoy following Amazon down the path of selling at a loss just to stay price competitive.