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Originally Posted by JoeD
Get rid of the DRM though and we'll have a situation closer to music (although not quite the same as there's still 2 formats in play, epub and mobi, but closer than we are now imo). It also means authors have the ability to not put their book on amazon and still potentially sell to kindle owners.
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Yeah, that's worked out
real well for musicians.
Musicians still have up-front costs for recordings, such as studio time and engineers. Sure you can record in your parents' basement on your Macbook and fumble through the mastering process, but the people who
actually have good equipment and
actually know what they're doing will charge more than most musicians can afford on their own.
Meanwhile, recording sales were in free-fall for years, which shifted the musicians' income sources away from recordings and onto live performances and advertisements. Book authors don't have an equivalent alternative source of income.
Authors have equivalent issues, in that hiring a high-quality editor is expensive. At the moment, many of the best editors are still working for publishers, so they won't be accessible to unattached authors. Freelance editing is also not exactly a gold-mine, afaik.
It's not a complete disaster -- musicians are still making recorded music. But the music industry hasn't disintermediated, the record companies are consolidating, digital music sales are monopolized by Apple, and musicians are making less money than before.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by JoeD
If the big 6 all pulled their books from Amazon and sold via stores with more acceptable terms, as long as the books were DRM free, kindle owners that must have their favourite author would still be able to buy them.
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The publishers can't possibly afford to do that.
They would lose far too much in sales, and Amazon would certainly blame the publishers for it. It would be an economic and PR nightmare.
In theory they could pressure Amazon into removing DRM. In practice, I expect Amazon will fight tooth and nail against that, to maintain vendor lock-in.
Even if you could buy a mainstream DRM-free book from another vendor, Amazon will have a huge advantage with its customers via Whispernet and instant delivery. There is no indication the DoJ is going to try to regulate vendor lock-ins, so Amazon would still maintain significant advantages over 3rd parties who were able to provide mobi, azw or get some type of access to the Kindle platform.