Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
I was talking about the DRM aspect, not Amazon gaining retailer dominance. I really don't care much about retailer dominance, but I do think that the nature of ebooks (their being so easy to publish and distribute) tends to make the role of middlemen like Amazon much less important and therefore the likelihood of their gaining stranglehold on the market much less likely.
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That's why I was a bit confused: I wasn't addressing the DRM aspect at all. If you're saying Amazon won't reach that point
because of DRM, I won't argue the point. I expect DRM will be a highly-invisible system at some point, nothing like what we have (and hate) today, or simply removed from use.
I agree with your points above. I'm just pointing out that the Kindle system is unique, well-advertised, and effective in easily delivering content. With that going for it, and some tweaks (better-looking reader, lower price, color screen, etc), the Kindle system could
conceivably become so successful that it becomes synonymous with e-book reading to the vast majority of the public, and thereby crowds out the competition.
There may be a lot of formats, distribution methods, etc... but if 97% of the public goes straight to Amazon, the market is theirs. It could happen.