Quote:
Originally Posted by Barcey
I'm fascinated by the argument that the agency model was solely response for taking Amazon from 80% to 60% of the ebook market. I guess that the only reason people were buying from Amazon was price and their customer experience and support sucked. Forget the fact that other ebook stores were largely matching Amazon's price. The first opportunity of agency pricing and 20% of the market place abandoned them. It's funny though I've heard Amazon criticized for a lot of things (and I've criticized them myself) but I've never heard Amazon's customer service and user experience largely criticized.
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There are few things wrong with what you're saying.
First, 20% is not everyone, so how you go from a 20% shift to the idea "the only reason people were buying Amazon" is a bit of mystery. At most, you might have wondered if "the only reason those 20% were buying from Amazon...." was price which is not all that unreasonable anyway. There are certainly people who complain about various aspects of Amazon, but might still have been lured only by the pull of the pocketbook.
Second, It is indeed possible that agency pricing might have succeeded in it's purported intent for some of that 20% in other ways besides price.
There are folks with Nooks and Kobos and other readers who shopped at Amazon, even though it meant some small inconvenience of stripping and converting the books, because they got better deals.
The loss of a price advantage may have gotten some of those folks to turn back to the convenience of their reader's integrated store.
So add in a few various factors like that and it's not hard to imagine the lion's share of a 20% shift, if not the whole thing.
ApK