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Originally Posted by fjtorres
Like the deals B&N and Borders were getting when Amazon started out?
Somehow, Amazon managed to grow past that Barrier-to-entry(TM).
So far, others (Kobo!) seem to be doing just fine and Baker and Taylor seem to think they can do fine despite a "fashionably late" start.
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Neither B&N nor Borders ever had the England language book market share one can suspect Amazon will have when eBooks triumph. And, remember, except among Amazon customers, they haven't triumphed yet. As of April 2012:
E-books last year accounted for 20.2 percent of all books sold in the U.S., up from 7.3 percent in 2010, according to Bowker Market Research. But that mass adoption of the digital word is still far off in one of Europe’s most-literate nations, Germany, where e-books account for only 1 percent of all book sales, according to a report published last month by the market research firm GdK.
The rest of Europe tends to be closer to Germany than the US here.
Now, maybe Amazon will stumble. But if publishers were to take the attitude sometimes seen in this thread, of equating Amazon with Borders, and assuming Amazon will similarly fail to gain market control, they really would be living in the past.
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Originally Posted by Ninjalawyer
Interestingly, it's worth noting that the DOJ was asked to investigate Amazon in 2009 and nothing came of it.
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Most companies with big market share eventually get anti-trust attention. And yet, roughly half the time, anti-trust changes fail to stick. That's because there is advantage to operating on the edge of anti-trust violations. Open and shut cases are unlikely.
It's highly likely that, as the publishers say, when the executives of the various companies spoke to each other, they were acting under advice of counsel. They were probably trying to step right up to the line without going over. This year, whether Apple and the publishers went over the line is the issue. If they get a big enough market share, Amazon's turn will come.