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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Umm, no. Amazon has a loss leader strategy (why the scare quotes?) which is traditionally both consumer friendly and sustainable. Giving away the first book in a 15 volume series in the hopes that consumers will like the book and buy the rest of the series is both consumer-friendly (a free book! No risk!) and sustainable.
Baen's plan (buy the latest hardback in the series and get the 14 preceding volumes in e-book format for free...or you can get them at 5th Imperium for free without buying the hardback) was *extremely* consumer friendly...but turned out to be non-sustainable once e-books became popular enough to actually cut into paper book sales.
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Well, you're making my point for me. I agree with a loss-leader strategy. That is not the same as gutting a writer's core inventory for free in order to drive sales in a steadily-declining format. For a long time Baen gave away ebooks they shouldn't have because they felt that ebooks were a fad at best. Now they know better.
Never heard the term "scare quotes" before. They're not scary to me; I deal in the real world of this industry as both a consumer and a site-builder, and I understand very clearly the difference between what is marketed to consumers as a strategy and what is a power grab for market share. They can be both, but in the case of Amazon's massive gross losses, I'm seeing less strategy and more power-grab. If someone comes along and offers something better, Amazon will take a major hit.