Books Are Not Different After All: Observations on the Formal Ending of the Net Book Agreement in the UK

By the begining of 1997 resale price maintenance was legally enforceable on only two groups of products in the UK, books and non-prescription medicines. The Net Book Agreement had been in existence substantially unchanged, for close on 100 years. It amounted to a horizontal agreement amongst publishers to maintain a vertical restraint on resale prices. The Restrictive Practices Court in 1962 had accepted that the abandonment of the Agreement would deprive the public of a substantial benefit and that, therefore, it could be retained. By the late 1990s, however, the Court was persuaded that there had been a material change of circumstances in the industry (in production costs, in the length of economic production runs, and in the structure of retailing) and that as a result, the arguments accepted in 1962 were no longer valid. In particular, the main supporter of the Agreement, the Publishers Association, had decided it could no longer defend it. The Court decided that the Agreement should be struck down.