Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
That's exactly what Waterstones has done.
For many years, Borders (US) did not set up their own website; they basically put a skin on Amazon's website. As a result, they were basically handing one of their biggest competitors a check and tons of user data every minute of every day. Along similar lines, they partnered with Kobo on ebooks.
Borders shut down last year. This wasn't the only reason why, but it certainly was a part of it.
In the short term, this is probably the best Waterstones can do. It would cost hundreds of millions of pounds to develop their own ebook reader, and it might never recoup the expenses. They could develop a tablet app, but would be hamstrung on the iOS platform.
In the long term, they've turned themselves into a showroom for Amazon, which is basically an inventive way of digging their own grave.
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Cosign. Maybe there is some secret agreement between Waterstones and Amazon that we don't know about, though. I've heard talk of maybe Waterstones in future offering deals whereby Waterstones print books are bundled wiith Amazon ebooks.