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Originally Posted by plib
I'm confused.
Are you coming to bury Amazon, or to praise them?  |
I'm pointing out that going DRM free wouldn't be a magic bullet for publishers. I guess my view is like Scalzi's:
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Amazon is not on your side. Neither is Apple, or Barnes & Noble, or Google, or Penguin or Macmillan. These are all corporations, not sports teams, and with the exception of Macmillan, they are publicly owned. They have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximize value. You are the means to that, not the end. The side these companies are on is their own side, and the side of their shareholders. This self-interest doesn’t make them evil. It makes them corporations.
Amazon wants you to stay in their electronic ecosystem for buying ebooks (and music, and movies, and apps and games). So does Apple, Barnes & Noble and Google. None of them are interested in sharing you with anyone else, ever. Publishers, alternately, are interested in having as many online retailers as possible, each doing business with them on terms as advantageous to the publishers as possible. All of them will work for their own ends to achieve their goals. Sometimes, their corporate goals will work in your immediate personal interest. Sometimes they will not.
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Amazon does some stuff I like. The BPHs produce the kind and quality of books that I like ( I like quality nonfiction and biography and I don't see anything like that coming out of a Smashwords and Baen type model). I like Apple too and think that there should be a space for high end, enhanced ebooks which is frankly the future of ebooks.
Frankly I would have preferred the current situation play out rather than the race-to-the bottom model which is what inevitable with Amazon running things.Make no mistake, thanks to the DOJ, Amazon WILL be running things for at least the next 2 years.