Many small German publishers see fixed book prices as a matter of life and death.
While the new platform hasn't actually launched yet, the company has already outlined its goals in a manifesto with the grandiose title, "How to fix book publishing".
As there is no fixed book for UKCAT, you have to make sure that you read everything related to the four sections in your syllabus.
Since 1981 French law has fixed book-prices so that readers pay the same whether they buy online, from a big high street chain, or from a small bookseller.
It is not clear why these textbooks should be so poor, although the generally low marks scored by shorter books show that "quick fix" books are inadequate.
Just be aware that the impulse that causes us to reach for a quick-fix book is the same one that makes us eat an entire box of doughnuts in the middle of the night.
Of course, the bound treasure trove of paper and ink is still celebrated, especially by the Germans — who have managed to keep the book's cost and clout high with the Fixed Book Price Agreement, which stipulates that new books cannot be discounted in stores or online — and by the Chinese, the word's largest supplier of paper.
Among the artistic rationales for major revisals are fixing weak books or dealing with dated — even off-putting — material, like the ethnic stereotyping in "Flower Drum Song" (heavily revised for a short-lived return to Broadway in 2002).
In 2013, Penguin, at the time a Pearson subdivision, paid $75 million after it was accused of fixing e-book prices.
After the demise of the Net Book Agreement in 1997 (which had fixed UK book prices since the turn of the 20th Century), Waterstone's entered a discounting war, undercutting small independents unable to afford such slim profit margins – only to be undercut itself, by the web and the supermarkets.
