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Originally Posted by brecklundin
I thought I would add that maybe Amazon is not allowed to sell in any format other then their own Kindle format...??
If they were each book would be out in every format that supports DRM...now THAT would improve book sales. I have to believe Amazon would have preferred that route as selling BOOKS is more their bread & butter over a simply piece of hardware which, strangely enough seems to be subsidizing the cost of the content rather then the cost of content subsidizing the cost of the device.
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I think quite a few of us don't understand why Amazon didn't simply adopt 2-3 of the most commonly used e-book formats and sell those, not hardware. Presumably, the Kindle gives them more control over where the file ends up, which is, I suspect, a key factor for them and their piracy-fearing publishers.
If piracy wasn't a concern (or if Amazon's people occasionally read Cory Doctorrow), I expect we'd be seeing Amazon convert its store to various e-book formats to sell to the most people. With their current system, they can say they sell e-books, but the number of readers will be smaller due to the initial investment of the Kindle. Maybe they do hope to use Kindle to hook the public on e-books (the exclusivitity method, everyone wants the new toys), then give them more hardware choices later by offering other formats or delivery packages (perhaps downloaded to cell phones?). We can only wait and see.