Quote:
Originally Posted by BKeeper
Eventually the market for the kindle (or any other ebook) is as big (or small) as the pbook market itself.
And for Amazon I think the kindle is not so much about money and market potential, it is about vision, about (re)building the foundations of the publishing business.
Bezos cannot sit around waiting for the pbook market to stagnate, his choice is clearly to be an agent of change.
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The big benefit of being an agent of change is staking out your position in the new market. I agree that ebooks will mostly supplant pbooks in the not-too-distant future and Amazon has a good chance of dominating that market by getting in early and shaping it. Many people look at the current devices and are skeptical, but let's not forget that they are going to evolve rapidly. Screens will get better as well as cheaper. It may not be e-ink. It could be some other technology as long as it's readable, light and low-power. With better screens, the devices will be able to handle a wider variety of applications (like the InfoPad concept). There will be more devices to choose from. Eventually people will be using them for work & school as well as for fun. When every kid is reading their textbooks on a device, we'll have a generation of people for whom reading on a screen is more normal than reading on paper.
Sure, right now it's early adopters and book lovers who are interested rather than the mass market, but that's still not too shabby. I wouldn't be quick to dismiss it. I bought a lot of books before, but I go through books even faster now and, probably more importantly, I'm buying almost all of them from Amazon. I used to buy from them some of the time but most of my books were bought elsewhere so I could have them quickly rather than waiting a couple of days. I'm a Prime member, but I really am that impatient. I used Amazon mostly for buying gifts. Now I'm on their site a few times a week. If a lot of us Kindle-owners are doing that, it's way more sales opportunities than just books. I admit I've gone there browsing books a few times and bought something else on impulse. I've already made a couple Kindle converts, too, and they read at least as much as I do. If they can keep lowering the price of the Kindle, they'll keep picking up more customers.