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Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
There are alternatives, but that doesn't change the fact that Amazon is a big player in the ebook market, and losing access to Amazon as a retailer means leaving lots of money on the table.
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Yes if Amazon won't sell your product you don't have direct access to their customer base which could impact your income, I'm not disputing that. What I am disputing is the claim that
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There is an undeclared war going on in the United States that threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom. In a statement worthy of Cassandra, Noah Davis wrote in Business Insider last October, "Amazon is coming for the book publishing industry. And not just the e-book world, either."
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That's just not true. There's nothing stopping any author setting up a store to sell ebooks as long as amazon allow reading of non-drm content. If you disagree with what amazon is doing, don't sell via them.
Now, if amazon turn around and say that's it, kindles will only work with content bought from our store, then I'd be more inclined to agree.
I'm also disputing the wallmart analogy. If amazon did pull a book or entire genre from their store that doesn't mean customers will never be able to access that content again, it just means there's now a niche opened for a new business to enter the market, assuming the niche is of sufficient size to make it economically viable..
They wanted a better deal, amazon told them no this is our offer, take it or leave it. Sure they can complain that they don't think the offer is fair, but to say it's a war that "threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom" is complete and utter tripe when they can just setup and sell direct or use alternative outlets.
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It'd be like pulling an iOS version of your app and only selling an Android version, because Apple demanded two or three times its current cut of your sales. It's your choice to decide whether to handle that stoically or discuss it in public, yes?
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Not really.
If apple decide that rather than taking 30% of sales they're now taking 80% I doubt anyone would pull their apps, since money is money, it costs nothing to leave an already existing app on the store, so why pull it and cut off a source of income (albeit now a smaller one).
There would be a choice to be made though for _future_ apps. Do you want to make/sell an app knowing you're now only going to get 20% for it, well that's a business choice to make based on how much money you think you'll get from Apple vs the cost to develop for it and yes I agree people will be vocal about saying they're not accepting those terms and won't be selling future apps via Apple.
If Apple decided to pull all your existing apps because you refuse to sell future apps with them, that would be a different matter. But from my understanding of the blog post, that's not what's happening, Amazon are trying to get a better rate for the existing stuff they sell, the supplier doesn't accept that rate. That's their choice and with books at least they can pull their product and still sell it, with Apple and apps you may as well just accept the reduced rate and leave existing apps on sale but not make new apps for it.
Now the situation is slightly different with books to apps, as with books you can sell direct and the cost to take a the format you submitted to amazon and convert to epub/mobi to sell direct or stick on other stores is negligible. So where it wouldn't make sense to pull your app products, it may make sense to pull your ebooks and sell those elsewhere/direct where profit margins are better. You still have access to amazon's customer base indirectly. In that regard, Authors are in a much better position vs Amazon than developers are vs Apple.
tl;dr version, it's not so much what the blogger is saying that I take issue with, it's the way they've embellished it as "threatens the lynchpins of American intellectual freedom" among other choice phases.
They don't agree with what amazon is doing, they want to tell others about what amazon is doing, all fair enough, but don't try to twist this into an issue it isn't. Amazon don't want their books for the price they had before, fine, if you don't accept amazons new price don't sell via them. Sure it may impact your bottom line making it a business decision and yes you can blog about it, but don't try to turn it into a "freedom" issue when it isn't.