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Originally Posted by crossi
Very true. Even if 80 or 90% of all ebook owners had Kindles the publishers could still sell their books to kindle owners without Amazon by simply dropping their insistance on DRM and making their books in all formats available everywhere. If they insist on enabling vendor lock-in I have no sympathy. The cure is up to them and doesn't include illegal collusion to fix prices.
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Well, this has been discussed too. Amazon's hold on the market haas little to DRM. Or rather DRM lockin is only a minor factor in Amazon's hold on the market . 99 per cent of Amazon's customers haven't even heard of DRM. Rather, Amazon's hold on the market has to do with first user advantage, marketing, pricing , convenience, customer service, device lockin, and format lockin . Even if th publishers gave up DRM, those advantages would still remain. Giving up DRM would not be cost free either ( There would be more file sharing).
Macmillan has moved toward DRM free on one of its lines ( Tor.com). Notably, Tor.com is also opening up its own store. That,s a direct channel to the consumer. THAT'S the answer to breaking Amazon's Hold on the ebook market.
I think that inevitably publishers are going to implement direct to consumer sales while Amazon is going to ( continue) to move into publishing. The ebook market 10 years from now will be one of several companies- BPHs , Amazon, and maybe Apple and Google- offering books that they publish and sell direct to consumers.