[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I would think that Amazons percentage of the market has gone down but since the market is growing it's ebook profit. I don't think Amazon is concerned with knocking out its competitors. The Nook has spurred Amazon to add some features but it seems to me that Amazon has targeted the IPad as its major competitor in the market. Amazon has done a bang up job of getting its apps out and advertising them. Non e-reader owners can find them easily and buy books from Amazon easily enough.

Well, if Amazon wants to compete against iPad, it's fallen behind BN, since the Nook Color apparently does exactly that. Amazon now will have to compete against both iPad and Nook Color, not to mention all the other tablets.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I think the very reason that people want Amazon to sell books in EPub and Mobi is because they cannot find books at the EPub book stores. I have read topics started by folks who bought a Kindle because they were having difficulty finding books for the Nook or Sony or Kobo. I have no idea what books they are looking at but it does seem to be something that is posted about frequently enough that it makes me raise an eyebrow. I would guess that the popular fiction and non fiction books are available at all the stores. I would think that the books people are having trouble finding are more niche books that Amazon has.

I really don't know what they're looking for--I would hope that people who were really needing/wanting certain niche books would have looked for them ahead of buying a reader.

I don't know if it's true for other people, but for me, Amazon was a habit. When I first started shopping online for (physical) books, I would check both BN and Amazon, and I was generally more likely to buy from BN. Gradually that changed, largely because of Amazon's better prices. And I reached a point where I almost never looked at BN anymore. But that took years during which I developed a certain loyalty to Amazon.

Now I've broken the Amazon habit in just a few months. As I see it, Amazon turned away a loyal customer. Am I unique? I really don't think so. I think there may be many like me who were happy Amazon shoppers, who have now discovered that they can do very well without Amazon.

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I understand why people want access to Amazon. I just find the argument that Amazon is anti-free market or taking away peoples freedom to shop where they want or that people should boycott Amazon because they don't sell books in EPub to be a bit silly. As you said, you choose your device knowing about the format issues, and you are happy with your choice. I just wish others would adopt that same attitude.

I really haven't seen that "anti-free market" argument. I think it's a straw man.