Quote:
Originally Posted by eboyhan
If you want to understand how Amazon might respond to the OP's original question, you need to understand something about their business, and how they're doing at it.
Many of us (myself included) have probably thought of Amazon primarily as a purveyor of books. That was true in the past, but it is not true now and will be even less so as they go forward. Last year only 45% of their revenues came from "media" (which also includes music and video -- so books presumably are quite a bit less than 45% of revenues). 45% of revenues comes from the sale of physical "things" (including the kindle), and 10% comes from web (cloud) services where Amazon is the largest provider of these services to small and medium-sized businesses.
In terms of growth physicals are growing the fastest, followed by web services with media bringing up the rear (although all segment growth is quite healthy). Income is also growing, but not as fast as many would like because costs are rising faster than revenues. This has nothing to do with the kindle or the eBook business, and everything to do with the rapid growth in the physicals business. Amazon is having to build this year 13 new fulfillment centers (a 30/% increase) just to keep up with the increase in the physicals side of things.
With all of that as prolog, Amazon would like the book business to grow, but their primary focus is on fostering a shift from the sale of physical books to eBooks. Every eBook sale that displaces a DTB sale has much higher margins and takes pressure off a fulfillment center.
Amazon probably looks at the book marketplace as consisting of two segments: mass market books, and everything else (primarily textbooks, technical and professional books -- the original DX target market). The kindles (excluding the DX) are aimed squarely at the mass market.
Some here have pointed out that ePub has superior format and layout capabilities as compared with mobi/prc. While true, I believe this is irrelevant when considering mass market books. Mobi/prc is more than sufficient for the bulk of the titles in this segment. As for the professional/technical segment the additional features in ePub are insufficient: the bulk of the eBook titles in this segment are released in PDF format (notwithstanding the problems smaller ereaders have in dealing with this format).
Several have talked about DRM. In a year of buying eBooks (200 mass market; 200 professional/technical), I have yet to come across a single instance where DRM has proved to be a problem. Almost everything from the Amazon kindle store is in the more tractable .prc format (I think I might only have one or two in the more difficult .tpz format). On the technical side no publisher that I have had occasion to do business with uses DRM. In fact the trend seems to be away from DRM: most technical book publishers seem to be using their DRM-free-edness as a sales feature).
Several have said that Amazon has allowed the mobi format to lie fallow since they bought the company controlling this format. This may have been true in the past, but now that Amazon is sticking their toe into the publishing swimming pool with their DTP endeavor (largely based on Mobipocket Creator and Kindlegen), I expect that will change.
I think it highly unlikely that Amazon will start selling eBooks in multiple formats -- their focus on keeping fulfillment costs low will lead them to offer just the mobi-derived formats. Providing ePub support in the kindle is possible for non-DRM'd titles, but this is easy enough to do (albeit an inconvenience) now. Once the kindle app store gets going, one of the first apps I expect to see is something that will make ePub reading on a kindle possible. EPub books containing DRM are more problematical, and I don't see this as within Amazon's purview.
Library access is a valid point, but I can see no reason for Amazon to put this very high on their to do list -- they would much prefer everyone to buy their own eBook copy rather than borrow it from a library somewhere.
Lastly, I'll just make a couple of comments vis a vis Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I have been doing business with Barnes and Noble for more than 40 years (starting out at their original store on lower fifth ave in NYC); and I have been doing business with Amazon almost since their inception. I have a very generous corporate discount arrangement with B&N -- my company buys a LOT of books). I have to say that over the years I have found Amazon to generally be 5-10% cheaper than B&N. When it comes to customer service, there is just no comparison -- Amazon is so much better; B&N's is by comparison a litany of restrictions. The terms and conditions surrounding the Nook seem to be continuing this tradition.
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Thanks for such a detailed and insightful answer, It's good to hear from those who know and understand the companies, not just histerical opinion,
I guess we pay our money, and take our choice
