After several months of contemplation, the Börsenverein has filed a formal complaint against audiobook retailer Audible at the Federal Cartel Office in Bonn in late August.
Audible which is a subsidiary of retailing giant Amazon is the sole provider of audio books for both Amazon and ITunes. As electronic audiobook sales in Germany are almost exclusively made through these two providers (90 % market share), the company holds a dominant position for the distribution of digital audio books.
Last year Audible started to terminate its contracts with several small scale audiobook publishers and presented them with new conditions. These entailed the acceptance of a new digital flat rate model, which results in a much lower profit margin. For many of these small scale enterprises, the acceptance of these conditions would mean the de facto surge of their activities as their work would become unsustainable. Notwithstanding, Audible has decided to push through its proposed model and has pressured publishers into accepting the new conditions. Resisting parties were threatened with the delisting of their entire content from Audible’s database, which would in practice prevent them from selling their content on the German market.
The Börsenverein sees in this behaviour a clear abuse of the company’s dominant position in the German market for the distribution of digital audio books. Alexander Skipis, the Chief Executive of the Börsenverein was quoted in the weekly magazine Der Spiegel with saying that “The business model proposed by Audible and Amazons aims at destroying established bookselling structures and as such poses a threat to cultural plurality in Germany”
Der Spiegel has moreover reported that the Börsenverein is not alone in its endeavour and that many more organisations have already filed formal complaints against the behaviour of Audible.
Apart from the German Cartel Office, the Börsenverein has also filed a complaint at the European Commission in Brussels. The institution has already two complaints against Amazon pending, one coming from Germany and one from the United Kingdom.
More Information (only available in German)
https://magazin.spiegel.de/digital/index_SP.html#SP/2015/39/138749236