Quote:
Originally Posted by charmian
Overstock entering the ebook market? That seems like a very strange idea. How would they do that? Undercut Amazon's ebook prices?
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The how is trivial: they can contract with any of several "white label" ebookstore service providers (Bluefire, Txtr, Overdrive) to setup a generic ADEPT ebookstore under their name. It's being done here and there.
They can also make a deal with Kobo like the one Borders had where they set up a clone of the Kobo website labelled Overdrive that runs off the Kobo back end.
Selling ebooks is easy these days.
Selling *lots* of ebooks? Less easy.
As for undercutting Amazon's prices, they could.
It's not as if Amazon discounts *every* book.
All they need is to undercut them on a few dozen high visibility books every week to establish their price-cutting street cred.
Now, I doubt Overstock has the pockets for it, but if they did, they could buy Nook and try to be Amazon-lite, selling books, ebooks, and dry goods.
Mostly I think the price war is a very clever and cost-efficient publicity campaign but there might be further moves ahead. And, honestly, the kind of thinking behind this publiciity campaign is the kind of thinking ebook selling needs to keep Amazon honest.
for Overstock.