Quote:
Originally Posted by Fbone
Who wants to look at 2878 different publishers websites for their reading material?
As it is now ebook retailing is too fragmented especially for epub.
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1- The topic being the idea that DRM gives Amazon increasing power over publishers, the obvious answer is that DRM or not, there is nothing keeping publishers from getting into retailing to maintain an alternative channel to the walled garden ebookstores from Amazon, B&N, Apple, and Kobo.
2- Note that I didn't say *exclusive* retailing; Harlequin maintains their storefront in parallel to their sales via Kindle, Nook, etc.
3- Also, online retailing allows for aggregation through portals. (Tiger Direct, J&R, and dozens of other online retailers sell direct from *their* websites in parallel to sales thrugh Amazon, Buy.com, eBay, etc). If every single publisher did their own ebook retailing, they could sign up with any portal they chose to serve as a front end. And at that point the Agency Model wouldn't be just price-fixing but a real business model.
One added virtue of this approach is that indie bookstores, the oh-so-beloved dying breed, could set up retail portals to aggregate the publishers' content as they saw fit; an indie shop specializing in SF (like the long-gone Moonstone Bookcellars in Washington, DC) could front for Tor, Orbit, Baen, Smashwords, or whatever.)
The real problem is that, in the face of massive disruption of their business model, instead of looking at the necessary major revamp of their business model, publishers keep looking for simplistic low-effort magic bullets. The least they can do is the most the will do.
That just won't do.
Oh, as to epub fragmentation: that is the *one* thing nobody can blame on Amazon. Who to blame is a whole different topic for the GENERAL DISCUSSION forum, I think.
