Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
Of course, if you are right about that, then why bother with a seperate store- just sell through Amazon and the other stores.
That works fine-till one store becomes so dominant that they can tell you "Agree to sell us your books at our price and on our terms -or you won't sell anything!".
If you are are satisfied Amazon customer, that's not your problem. If you are a publisher, that's a life and death business dilemma.
Tor.com is one publisher's attempt to avoid this coming to pass. Other publishers have other projects going like this one. Stay tuned.
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The way to prevent a store from becoming dominant is to find a way of allowing competition. DRM free wholesale would allow BN, Kobo, Sony, and independent bookstores to try methods that might take people away from Amazon.
Kobo runs some really nice coupons, not on anything that I read, but they would be of interest to many an Amazon reader. Most Kindle users won't use them because they don't know about drm stripping and conversion. Remove the DRM and allow the various bookstores to sell DRM free EPub and Mobi. Then allow those coupons to be used on TOR books. Now people have an incentive to shop at Kobo. Either Amazon has to match all of Kobo's deals, which it could probably do, but at least it gives Kindle users an easier way to go and shop at Kobo.
I don't think that the DRM free Publisher store will work. Most ereader users are probably not fully aware of DRM. Those who are probably don't care because they shop at the store tied to their e-reader. Why bother shopping somewhere else to get something without DRM? It is an extra step. Maybe if the TOR store was 25% percent less expensive then Amazon but I am not sure that is allowable even under Agency Pricing. Since TOR would be the publisher, I am assuming that whatever price they sell the book for at their store would be a fair price to sell the book for at all other sites.
But if Amazon has to worry about matching deals from BN, Kobo, Smashwords, Baen, Sony, and a series of other independents life becomes more difficult for them and they might, just might, lose some business.