Stephen Levy Interviews Jeff Bezos at Wired "Disruptive By Design" Coference (video)

sirbruce · 06-16-2009, 09:31 PM

http://link.brightcove.com/services/...id=26441647001

Some interesting tidbits, Jeff Bezos admits that they don't make money on bestsellers, but they can sustain the $9.99 price tag on them. "Customers know they shouldn't pay the same for an ebook that they pay for a paper book." He also says the Kindle is agressively priced and can't be much cheaper. He said they also considered subsidizing the Kindle like with cell phones where they require you pay a monthly subscription fee, but they felt it was better for people to pay the simple full up front cost. But hs is willing to consider offering a subscription-based subsidy where the initial cost is cheaper if that's what customers want.

sirbruce · 06-16-2009, 09:42 PM

"... Would you be just as eager to license it to another ebook manufacturer, who said, I have a tablet, I have another ebook [reader], that I want to go into competition with you, give me access to the Amazon store, would that be okay?"

"I don't see any reason why we wouldn't do that." However, he says he would require that WhisperSync works, so it looks like they would have to have wireless.

sirbruce · 06-16-2009, 10:36 PM

Question from the audience:

"I was wondering what your philosophy is regardining openness of that platform. We've seen with the iPhone what openness, or at least a degress of openness, can do. An example is, I guess, there's an appllication called Savory, that a lot of usKindle owners have tried to download, it helps us to read PDFs, epub, things of that nature. But what we hear is that Amazon traditionally pushes against independent developers trying to develop applications, that are trying to make the Kindle more useful for its user. So, where do you guys stand on that."

"Well, we have, you know, we're try--we actually are putting more and more native formats on the device. Kindle DX is the first device to have the native PDF format, and I would like to see more native formats on the device over time as well. So, again, the way we're looking at this business, the, as, we want, the, is really two businesses. We have the Kindle bookstore, and we want the Kindle books to be readable on every hardware device. And we want this [the Kindle] to be the best reading device. And I don't think the Kindle format is going to be the only format people want to read. So we have to make PDFs available on this. We have a very good, you know, Word Docs, and so on actually work very well on this We convert them to Kindle format, in large part so we can do some of the special stuff that we do with the Kindle format, like WhisperSync and font size changes and things like that. But [...] it would make sense, I think, to have that device also be able to read other formats natively."

He goes on to say that the lack of folder support, changelogs, feedback on the message boards, etc. are simply incompetence on their part, not intentional.

daffy4u · 06-16-2009, 10:46 PM

Thanks for the link.

poohbear_nc · 06-17-2009, 08:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Question from the audience:

He goes on to say that the lack of folder support, changelogs, feedback on the message boards, etc. are simply incompetence on their part, not intentional.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry over this line?

The folder issue has been an issue since day 1 of K1. Ignoring the message boards ditto. etc.

sirbruce · 06-17-2009, 09:19 AM

He said "Never attribute to conspiracy what you can attribute to incompetence" and basically said that their lack of response on these issues wasn't intentional. He also implied that the web services group was who primarily interacted with customers, which suggests they may not have anyone from the Kindle team actively involved with the feedback.

poohbear_nc · 06-17-2009, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirbruce

He said "Never attribute to conspiracy what you can attribute to incompetence" and basically said that their lack of response on these issues wasn't intentional. He also implied that the web services group was who primarily interacted with customers, which suggests they may not have anyone from the Kindle team actively involved with the feedback.

Again - laugh or cry? - there is incompetence, and then there is INCOMPETENCE - or just not caring enough to notice.

sirbruce · 06-17-2009, 10:05 AM

I can give them some slack since they'd been busy with 4 harware platforms in 2 years... but not that much.

poohbear_nc · 06-17-2009, 10:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sirbruce

I can give them some slack since they'd been busy with 4 harware platforms in 2 years... but not that much.

Enough slack to make a noose??

whitearrow · 06-17-2009, 02:49 PM

I wish Bezos would address the persistent quality problems. Still no new version of LotR, is there.

poohbear_nc · 06-17-2009, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by whitearrow

I wish Bezos would address the persistent quality problems. Still no new version of LotR, is there.

I wish he would directly address any issue - with definite facts, dates, etc. Instead of the continuing avoidance of any customer concerns.

sums up the customer experience - is anyone listening?

brecklundin · 06-18-2009, 12:49 AM

I want to know how Amazon can justify the position of Mobipocket exclusivity when at the same time he claims to want to add more formats to the Kindle and also get Kindle format on more devices. Is Amazon going to insist on exclusivity, even over Mobipocket?

color me very confused by all of it.

And yes, I do realize that Mobipocket is a separate company from Amazon, in theory anyway. That is part of what really is making my temples throb.

06-16-2009, 09:31 PM	#1
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	Stephen Levy Interviews Jeff Bezos at Wired "Disruptive By Design" Coference (video) http://link.brightcove.com/services/...id=26441647001 Some interesting tidbits, Jeff Bezos admits that they don't make money on bestsellers, but they can sustain the $9.99 price tag on them. "Customers know they shouldn't pay the same for an ebook that they pay for a paper book." He also says the Kindle is agressively priced and can't be much cheaper. He said they also considered subsidizing the Kindle like with cell phones where they require you pay a monthly subscription fee, but they felt it was better for people to pay the simple full up front cost. But hs is willing to consider offering a subscription-based subsidy where the initial cost is cheaper if that's what customers want.

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06-16-2009, 09:42 PM	#2
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	"... Would you be just as eager to license it to another ebook manufacturer, who said, I have a tablet, I have another ebook [reader], that I want to go into competition with you, give me access to the Amazon store, would that be okay?" "I don't see any reason why we wouldn't do that." However, he says he would require that WhisperSync works, so it looks like they would have to have wireless.

06-16-2009, 10:36 PM	#3
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	Question from the audience: "I was wondering what your philosophy is regardining openness of that platform. We've seen with the iPhone what openness, or at least a degress of openness, can do. An example is, I guess, there's an appllication called Savory, that a lot of usKindle owners have tried to download, it helps us to read PDFs, epub, things of that nature. But what we hear is that Amazon traditionally pushes against independent developers trying to develop applications, that are trying to make the Kindle more useful for its user. So, where do you guys stand on that." "Well, we have, you know, we're try--we actually are putting more and more native formats on the device. Kindle DX is the first device to have the native PDF format, and I would like to see more native formats on the device over time as well. So, again, the way we're looking at this business, the, as, we want, the, is really two businesses. We have the Kindle bookstore, and we want the Kindle books to be readable on every hardware device. And we want this [the Kindle] to be the best reading device. And I don't think the Kindle format is going to be the only format people want to read. So we have to make PDFs available on this. We have a very good, you know, Word Docs, and so on actually work very well on this We convert them to Kindle format, in large part so we can do some of the special stuff that we do with the Kindle format, like WhisperSync and font size changes and things like that. But [...] it would make sense, I think, to have that device also be able to read other formats natively." He goes on to say that the lack of folder support, changelogs, feedback on the message boards, etc. are simply incompetence on their part, not intentional.

06-16-2009, 10:46 PM	#4
daffy4u I'm Super Kindle-icious Posts: 6,734 Karma: 2434103 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Long Drive, Calinadia Candafornia Device: KDXG, KT, Oasis	Thanks for the link.

06-17-2009, 09:19 AM	#6
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	He said "Never attribute to conspiracy what you can attribute to incompetence" and basically said that their lack of response on these issues wasn't intentional. He also implied that the web services group was who primarily interacted with customers, which suggests they may not have anyone from the Kindle team actively involved with the feedback.

06-17-2009, 10:05 AM	#8
sirbruce Provocateur Posts: 1,859 Karma: 505847 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Columbus, OH Device: Kindle Touch, Kindle 2, Kindle DX, iPhone 3GS	I can give them some slack since they'd been busy with 4 harware platforms in 2 years... but not that much.

06-17-2009, 02:49 PM	#10
whitearrow Guru Posts: 808 Karma: 2260766 Join Date: Apr 2008 Device: Kindle Oasis 2	I wish Bezos would address the persistent quality problems. Still no new version of LotR, is there.

06-18-2009, 12:49 AM	#12
brecklundin Banned Posts: 1,906 Karma: 15348 Join Date: Jun 2007 Device: mine	I want to know how Amazon can justify the position of Mobipocket exclusivity when at the same time he claims to want to add more formats to the Kindle and also get Kindle format on more devices. Is Amazon going to insist on exclusivity, even over Mobipocket? color me very confused by all of it. And yes, I do realize that Mobipocket is a separate company from Amazon, in theory anyway. That is part of what really is making my temples throb.

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