Thread: Has Sony lost the e-book battle against Amazon?
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Old 08-14-2008, 03:32 PM   #164
Alisa
Gadget Geek
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Device: Paperwhite, Kindle 3 (retired), Skindle 1.2 (retired)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan View Post
In case you're referring to my post... I'm being completely serious. Romance readers manage to fall under the radar of so many literary segments, that their contribution to the rise of the Kindle could easily have been overlooked by many of us.

I always doubted that so many people could buy an expensive device like the Kindle sight-unseen, and I expected that most Kindle buyers probably were introduced to the device by another owner instead. I can easily believe romance readers could have been an "underground" promotional force for the Kindle, which has had no other public demo venue available, showing the reader to their friends and family and driving sales. Makes sense to me.
"Genre fiction" readers get overlooked way too much IMO. The biggest book buyers I know are the SciFi, Fantasy and Romance readers. Some of these folks buy books almost daily. I know Baen's webscriptions are quite popular. Is there something similar for Romance readers? If not there should be. Either that, of maybe something Netflix-like: a monthly fee for all the romance novels you can read. There may be less revenue per book that way, but the store ensures that they get virtually all that customer's purchases.

One of the criticisms of the viability of reading devices and ebook stores is that there's not necessarily a lot of growth in the market. People aren't going to start reading a ton more. From the perspective of an individual store, it's more important that they buy more from them regardless of how much they buy in general. That's my concern for Sony in this business. Their store doesn't seem that popular. Maybe it's just the audience here but when you ask Sony owners where they buy books, it's Baen's, Fictionwise, Books on Board, etc. The Kindle owners I talk to have been buying most if not all of their books from Amazon because Whispernet delivery is just too darned easy. Maybe Sony would do well to get a lock on customers some other way. I wonder if they could make a go of romance subscriptions.
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