Quote:
Originally Posted by Maggie Leung
I also wonder how much business Amazon has gained indirectly because of Kindle. I used to rarely shop there. Since I started buying Kindle books, I've bought many non-Kindle items there as well. There probably are other such customers.
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Now, here is an interesting concept.
I spent $0 at Barnes and Noble, living in Canada, before 2010. That's because, Barnes and Noble cannot be
arsed to sell anything in Canada -- Nooks, books, ebooks. Windsor may be south of Detroit ... but Canada might as well be in Russia.
And yet ... since buying a Kindle 2i in Nov 2009, I have spent money at the "is it dead yet?!?" subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, Fictionwise.
I admit to having bought a couple of (physical) books from amazon.com and amazon.ca (that's Canada, not California) each year in recent memory. The customer service, the catalog, the order system is flawless ... nothing like it in Canada. And, one day after Amazon deigned to do business with its Kindle in Canada, I was at the head of the line. At first, I used the Kindle with public domain titles, then a couple of free titles, and now, well, what can I say? Amazon Kindle books are just better formatted than the competition, competitively priced (not necessarily lowest), and, wow, easy to deal with. My Kindle 2i has been upgraded for far more capability than it had when I thought it was worth $259. And I am buying from Amazon regularly.
Is anyone listening?
Amazon's Kindle is a great device: I want to feed it. Non-Amazon vendors have my ear ... but Kindle books are often as good or better and the same price or cheaper than alternatives. If I am lucky, I can read 60 books a year. So, don't get in the way: make it EASY for me to buy from you.
Even if I am willing to go through hoops to change formats: Barnes and Noble refuses to sell to Canada. Sony e-Reader store offers me hundreds of thousands of titles which, in my check out cart, are removed: sorry, second class folks, go somewhere else. My secondary reader, a Kobo, sits idle. (Although, the Canadian Kobo book store is credible and I am buying things there.)
With 60+ titles annually on my list of books I am willing to PAY for, what are my choices? Like,
duhhh!, of course I am going to return to Amazon. And as no other vendor is interested in making it easy for me to be a customer ... where else will I go?
An aside: some folks are getting their shirts in a knot about 2 year exclusive Amazon deals for a few handfuls of backlist titles. A reminder. Most of us are hard pressed to read a book a week -- that's scarcely more than 3000 books over 60 adult reading years ... if novel X is temporarily locked out ... there are millions of other worthy titles worth reading.