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Originally Posted by GreenMonkey
Read up on Vlasic pickles + walmart, for example. Walmart basically has the power to dictate to some companies what price they will pay - the company has two choices. Do it and struggle, or tell Walmart to stuff it, and lose such a large volume of shares that you go out of business anyway.
I don't believe Amazon is this powerful in the book market . . .
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WalMart had about a third of the US supermarket share last year, but their share outside the US is generally small.
Amazon's English language eBook market share is clearly bigger than WalMart's grocery share in the US, and much bigger than WalMart's grocery share outside the US.
As for books overall, I can't find firm statistics. But according to at least one analyst,
Amazon [is] Positioned for 50% Overall Market Share by End of 2012.
WalMart is declining while Amazon is growing. Good for Vlastic, not so good for people who read heavily researched non-fiction books.
Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
Also too, Amazon is starting to compete with them in publishing
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Yes. And as far as I can tell, Amazon is picking off the sort of books that are quick to write and easy to edit.
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Originally Posted by murraypaul
If that is true, then the publishers must not be providing any useful services, so deserve to be cut out.
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Lots of companies provide no useful services to me. Take every luxury car maker. Or hog producers. If you don't find their product to be a good value for money, or just don't want it, of course you won't buy it. But this kind of comment seems to imply that not only you don't need to buy their kind of product, you don't want them to provide it to others. Or am I missing something?
If you don't want books that are heavily edited, don't read 'em. Many self-published authors need your patronage!
Since I do mostly read heavily researched and edited books, I have concerns about them facing the Vlastic problem.