Re: Re: Amazon

From: "Daniel P. B. Smith"
<snip>
> Good, bad, or indifferent, you have to credit Amazon; the Kindle was the turning point. And it wasn't the Kindle itself, it was the fact that Amazon solved the _real_ problems inhibiting eBook adoption. The first and most important was lack of title availability. For all previous eBooks, title availability was a joke. eBookshops were like airport bookstores, if the question was "can I find something, anything to read," the answer was "yes," but if the question was "can I find specific book X" the question was usually "no."
<snip>

I'll accept your view of that, since I haven't studied it; certainly they brought in the big players, who were not really interested in facing the problems of digital editions.

That doesn't escuse the greed and bullying they've diplayed and enacted, though.

> The second, alas imperfectly solved, was price, but at least Amazon managed to break through the greedy insanity of pricing new titles in eBook at hardbound prices.

I'm sure we'll never really agree on pricing ;-), but I agree there is no way to justify pricing equivalent to hardback. But there is no sense in a retailer determining a publisher's price; you can have lower prices, but quality will follow downhill. 

Amazon/Kindle is also repeating the problem of distribution costs for publishers. Its terms are two kinds. It takes 65% [more that print distribution for all parts of that chain] if it is to leave the price alone. It takes 30% [still an excessive proportion for digital sales] but determines the selling price and pays the publisher only on the discounted price. That's like working your butt off and then being paid according to how the buyer felt that morning - before they had coffee, and less the price of a gold collar for the cat.

> 
> If there is a large enough eBook market to be worthy of marketing to, it will be largely because of Amazon and the Kindle.
> 
> I wonder if Bezos was actually enough of a visionary to be looking ahead to eBooks, if he consciously was thinking about them as his real reason for starting Amazon? "Someday soon there will be eBooks and a large, mainstream, internet bookstore will be in the best position to make the transition?" 

Well, that's a nice thought. Experience shows they Bezos is a hardheaded business man. He shares this with the founders of the other giants - MS, Apple, Google and a few others. they certainly understand electronics, and the opportunites of the web. But there is little sign of the generosity that I associate with the true visionary, like Tim Berners.

Joseph


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