Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The reason Amazon is so much more succesful than their competitors is because they are cherry-picking the ebook-buying market, drawing in those customers who don't mind buying most of their content and leaving the rest to their competition.
In the video game industry, which ebooks are starting to resemble, there is an important term that exemplifies the fact that not all customers are equally valuable to a platform holder: attach rate. At its simplest, this is the ratio of unit game sales divided by the number of unit consoles sold. This current console generation, the Nintendo Wii has clearly outsold the second place Xbox 360 in total number of consoles sold, yet the 360 regularly ranks way higher in total game sales and has recently been generating more game software revenue than the Wii and Sony PS3 combined. This is due to a combination of factors but it is mostly due to the Xbox managers' relentless focus on marketing the 360 as a gaming platform for serious gamers. Where the Wii drew in buyers who hadn't previously owned game consoles and Sony drew in buyers interested in the PS3 as a bluray player, Microsoft drew in a disproportionate share of buyers who's primary interest was gaming and routinely bought 8-10 or more games a year. In simple attach rate terms, the average Xbox owner has bought 9+ games per console while Sony and Nintendo buyers average more like 6 games. And this in an industry with healthy used and rental businesses on the side.
If Amazon ebook unit sales are outpacing their pbook sales it is because Kindle buyers buy a lot of books, not just because they've sold a Lot of Kindles. (Though it surely helps.) If there were any kind of reliable tracker of ebook and reader sales it would clearly show that Kindle has a higher attach rate than any of its competitors because it doesn't support library access and because you don't need a Kindle to buy and read Kindle books.
It is all to easy to focus overmuch on the Kindle hardware and forget that Kindle is also software. And even easier to forget that the real focus is the books. Amazon management is doing exactly what they set out to do: sell ebooks. Everything else is secondary or irrelevant.
|
Attach rate, huh? I typically purchase anywhere from 8-10 books a month. These sales were split between Amazon and B&M bookstores with Amazon getting the majority. When I started buying ebooks, my purchase rate went up dramaticly - I've purchased 25 books from fictionwise alone in the last 30 days. That is not counting my purchases from Kobo and smashwords nor does it include my print book purchases.
I would say that I am the type of customer that any bookseller would want.
If Amazon supported library lending (and never had that whole 1984 issue), I would have purchased a kindle and stayed attached to Amazon.
I decided to buy a Kobo because Kobo supports library lending (which I love) - and it's Amazon who gets the short end of the stick as well as less of my paycheck.
I no longer care that Amazon refuses sell books to me. I'm starting to wander away from Amazon - which hurts them a lot more than me, as I have been a great customer to them for a very long time.
Note: I never heard of Calibre, format conversions, or DRM stripping before joining MR. Since most consumers are in the same boat as I was, I do not consider any of those items something that can help a consumer make a hardware purchase decision.