[curtw]

Originally Posted by hidari

Mr. Elgan makes a few points:

Unfortunately, most of his points are 100% wrong.

Originally Posted by Elgan

Everyone who has ordered and is still waiting for delivery on an old Kindle should be given the opportunity to instead receive a new one at the same price.

Per Amazon's own policies, anyone who has ordered an item that is not yet being "prepared for shipping" can cancel the order with no penalty at all. If the new model costs more, Amazon can not be expected to absorb the difference. They might earn some goodwill by offering the "waiters" a discount if they are currently regularly making customers wait longer than their predicted back-order times, but I wouldn't call it a key to success.

Originally Posted by Elgan

Nobody knows what kinds of deals you're offering book, magazine and newspaper publishers, but if you're not making it highly profitable for them, you're missing a huge opportunity.

However, Amazon seems to be stuck in the same rut as the publishing industry in believing that high prices will maximize profit. Nobody seems to get the fact that because the incremental costs of e-publishing approach zero as you sell more, the gateway to profit is volume, volume, volume at a price that people are willing to pay (which today, I would guess is about 40-50% of the cost of the physical book)

Originally Posted by Elgan

Apple gets away with something you cannot, which is to not allow competitive media players to play iTunes content.

Apple has been fighting against the recording industry since day one to REMOVE this restriction. Ironically, it's been Amazon's "500 lb gorilla" leverage in being able to sell DRM-free MP3 files that gave Apple the foot in the door to also being able to sell DRM-free, and consumers the ability to move their iTunes purchases to competing portable players without the hassle of transcoding.

Originally Posted by Elgan

Allow the margins to keep declining as the cost of hardware keeps dropping (through Moore's Law and economies of scale).

This is where an Apple example would have been relevant. Remember the $100 price drop in the iPhone as soon as the early adopters had passed through?

My suggestion is thus: The #1 thing Amazon could do to "not screw up eBooks" would be to sell Kindle books for people to read on the hardware they already own (using, of course, the Mobipocket software that Amazon already owns). Once people get a taste, they'll come and start buying the Kindle hardware as well. The taste of ease of use of iTunes on the desktop was one key to the success of Apple's iPod.