Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
I'm not whining about their prices. All I'm saying is that because Amazon sells so much more than ebooks, it has other revenue streams that other booksellers do not have and that they can divert those revenue streams.
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I wasn't refering to you personally, you don't compete with Amazon, do you?
All *I* am saying is that Amazon lives off lean margins not because they have other revenue streams but because that it how they roll; they monetize *everything*. Other companies treat IT as a cost center, Amazon made it a profit center; other companies see competitors as a threat, Amazon is perfectly happy to serve as a fulfillment center for them. Other companies see no problem in paying royalties to an annointed standard holder, Amazon prefers to own its tech whenever possible, creating it if they can, buying the owner (Mobileread, Audible, Diapers.com) if necessary/feasible.
To say they *only* succeed because of their multiple revenue streams is simplistic: those revenue streams have to support the business centers that generate that revenue in the first place. And lets not forget that shifting revenue to incubate new profit centers is a standard business practice (B&N is doing exactly that with Nook and PubIt, and to sign their own Nook-exclusive content, and so is Apple in deploying iBooks worldwide), and more importantly, it is pretty clear Kindle has been generating positive cash-flow for Amazon for at least a year, if not longer. All they are doing is what every well-run company is doing.
And finally, yes; Amazon is a big, multi-faceted company. So what? That by itself is not a crime. The publishing companies they are taking on are hardly lemonade stands; they are giant multinationals with tentacles in publishing all over the world and back catalohgs thousands of titles deep, so how come Amazon and their hundred book portfolio is suddenly an unfair competitor?
Shall we conveniently forget that B&N and Borders were bookselling powerhouses long before there was an Amazon, that the market share Amazon now commands was there for the taking by anybody, big or small? Amazon is a tough big competitor but the way they got that way was by competing; nobody passed a government act giving them anything. What they have they worked for and they'll keep it until they screw up or until somebody smarter comes along or, more likely, the whiners find a government they can buy into outlawing Amazon.
Amazon is nobody's friend but neither are any of their enemies; there's no good guys or bad guys there---they're all money-grubbing corporations out to make a buck anyway they can.
Off us.
No angels there, no demons either.
Just humans playing the game of big business.
Its a fun game to watch but we shouldn't forget it's just a game to them. They all have their nicely vested golden parachutes, after all.