Which Will Win Out, Sony Reader or Kindle?

[jakewastaken]

As a few other people have mentioned, multiple products co-exist in almost every market without one needing to beat out the other. You shouldn't be voting for one to win over the other in the first place. Competition is good for consumers! If we fall in love with one device and all other manufacturers cease to produce their readers we will become locked in - this is no good for anyone. That device manufacturer will then have no incentive whatsoever to be innovative or to offer any kind of discount as well as hampering innovation.

[Alisa]

ITA. I love my Kindle but I find the prospect of Sony exiting the business a bit distressing. I think it's good for all of us if there are multiple, strong competitors for devices and content.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by astra

Could not agree more.

To Each Its Own. I hope both will stay and compete. We need all of them to promote ebooks.

Actually, we could really do without the Kindle and Amazon. Amazon has screwed people over with eBooks in the past and they are still doing it today. We don't need Amazon to screw people over with eBooks. We need them to play nice. But they didn't in the past and they don't now. It is totally not right for Amazon to get exclusive content that we know a lot of people without a Kindle have been wanting for a long time now. I would not find the prospect of Amazon leaving the eBook market for good to be bad. In fact, I'd find it to be quite good.

[astra]

Man! You are a little bit slow

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by astra

Man! You are a little bit slow

Not at all. I've just found out that Amazon is making exclusive deals for an eBook that lots of people want. And not all of those people have a Kindle. What this is doing is making things worse in the eBook world. We cannot have exclusive deals like this ever. It's just going to make more people stick with pBooks when they may not have.

[astra]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Not at all. I've just found out that Amazon is making exclusive deals for an eBook that lots of people want. And not all of those people have a Kindle. What this is doing is making things worse in the eBook world. We cannot have exclusive deals like this ever. It's just going to make more people stick with pBooks when they may not have.

Yeah, I have read your post about exclusive TG deal after I replied here.
I see your point.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by astra

Yeah, I have read your post about exclusive TG deal after I replied here.
I see your point.

eBooks should be available for everyone. Not just because you happened to spend $400.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would not find the prospect of Amazon leaving the eBook market for good to be bad. In fact, I'd find it to be quite good.

Although I do not like Amazon, do not buy from Amazon, and worry about Amazon's market power, I disagree, Jon, that it would be good if Amazon quit the ebook market. In fact, I think it would be bad.

If Amazon left the hardware market, that would be OK; it's the ebook market that would be problematic because it would send the message to publishers that ebooks are not a viable market. After all, the one thing Amazon has done correctly over the years is identify and build markets -- even eBay is changing its strategy and emphasis because of Amazon's success.

Publishers were previously reluctant to pursue the ebook market for lots of reasons, but one I heard repeatedly from my publishing clients was that if it was such a great market Amazon would be in it. I haven't heard that one in quite some time. But should Amazon now abandon the ebook market, I think you would see a halt to the progress ebooks are making. I do not think this would be true should Amazon abandon the hardware market, i.e., stop producing and selling Kindles, but I do fear it would occur if Amazon abandoned the ebook part.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Actually, we could really do without the Kindle and Amazon. Amazon has screwed people over with eBooks in the past and they are still doing it today. We don't need Amazon to screw people over with eBooks. We need them to play nice. But they didn't in the past and they don't now. It is totally not right for Amazon to get exclusive content that we know a lot of people without a Kindle have been wanting for a long time now. I would not find the prospect of Amazon leaving the eBook market for good to be bad. In fact, I'd find it to be quite good.

Do we have some evidence that Amazon is making deals with publishers not to sell their books to other stores? If not, then it's the publishers you need to get on. Amazon can't force them to make multiple formats for other stores. [Edit: Just found the thread on Terry Goodkind. Yeah. Not thrilled about that. Hopefully, it will not be a permanent exclusive and it will go to other shops eventually. I still recommend lighting a fire under Rosetta.]

As for Amazon's "screwing people over", I wasn't around for that but someone was saying here awhile back that they sent out notices that business was closing and gave people a year to download their content again. That isn't ideal but it's far from "screwing" customers like, oh say, distributing a rootkit on CDs and DVDs.

[slayda]

I have to agree with Jon on this. Once Amazon drives all other ebook reading devices out of the market because they can not get any ebooks in their formats, then Amazon can charge whatever they want for ebooks. It's bad enough now with the special deals they make on prices. Another post showed the Kindle version of "Zoe's Tale" to be $9.99. All other ebooks were above $17, some near $20. I can buy the hardback for $20 and Barnes and Nobles. And no one without a Kindle can even buy the Kindle version, let alone read it.

Amazon is screwing the public and all their competitors just because they can afford to do so.

[Nate the great]

Zoe's Tale isn't in Kindle, it's in Mobipocket. The Kindle Store sub-licensed it from Mobipocket, just like any other retailer.

The real problem here is that the publisher set the price too high.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Zoe's Tale isn't in Kindle, it's in Mobipocket. The Kindle Store sub-licensed it from Mobipocket, just like any other retailer.

The real problem here is that the publisher set the price too high.

Can anyone without a Kindle buy it from Amazon?

Edit: No. You can only buy it via whispernet, so for all practical purposes, it IS a Kindle book.

[JSWolf]

if you do not own a Kindle then you cannot purchase Kindle eBooks. If Amazon would not allow the publisher to sign an exclusive contract, then that sort of thing could not happen.

[nekokami]

Hm. Granted that Amazon is a corporation and is interested in maximizing profits, let's consider a couple of other points of view here.

Amazon comes out with a new ebook system. Why not use an existing reader, e.g. Bookeen? Why on earth would they want to get into the hardware design business, not their traditional line and possibly a big risk?

One obvious reason is because none of the other ebook readers offered the kind of ease of use Amazon wanted to offer, because none of them had a cellular network built-in. Amazon wanted to make a reader you could browse the store and purchase books from. That would take more input options than any of the other devices had, in addition to better connectivity.

Having gone into the device design and provision business, I'm sure Amazon wants to recover their investment. But I think there's another reason they've locked Kindle books so tightly to the Kindle. I think it comes back to the publishers, wanting "tough" DRM to prevent those awful evil pirates from stealing their IP. I think the publishers who were never willing to go with ebooks before were talked into it by Amazon in part due to promises made about how hard it would be to crack the DRM on these books. I think everyone involved was looking at the iTunes model and trying to figure out how to emulate it as closely as possible... just as Apple itself was moving away from DRM.

Personally, I think this was misguided at best. Amazon's use of a variant of Mobipocket was, in my mind, what finally drove the cracking of the Mobi format. It would not surprise me at all if someone eventually either provides a common, simple workaround to purchasing Kindle books without a Kindle, or goes to court to force Amazon to open their Kindle book sales to non-kindle owners.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by slayda

Can anyone without a Kindle buy it from Amazon?

Edit: No. You can only buy it via whispernet, so for all practical purposes, it IS a Kindle book.

Sorry to be nit-picky but just for the sake of accuracy, you do not need Whispernet to buy books. You can download them and load them via USB. You do need to have a Kindle registered to your account, though.