Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
KDP Select requires 90 days of exclusivity in return for a variety of promotional services, the most attractive of which has been inclusion in the Prime lending library.
Publishers choosing to go with KDP Select seem to do it for one of two reasons: either as a timed-exclusive launch mechanism to rack up exposure (and hopefully sales) and reviews in the Amazon ecosystem before going multi-platform, or because their multi-platform sales skew so heavily to Amazon that forgoing the benefits of Select doesn't make business sense. A fair amount of the second group start out in the first: they launch under Select and then go multi-platform but find the results less than satisfactory on the competitors. Some cases I've seen, it is the alternate retailer's services that fall short; either on the visibility side or on the backend side.
As I said above, Amazon's domination is not due solely to their excellence but also their competitors' deficiencies.
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Ah, the short period of exclusivity explains why the government hasn't gone after them, I think. But I still say the multi-platform selling generates more sales than exclusivity. Maybe not a lot more, but more-and does it cost the producer more? I suppose it could, in legal fees (and maybe administration) but not in 'production' costs. Or maybe it does-depends on whether we're talking author/publisher and who the contract holds responsible for the costs of re-formatting/converting the book to the new platform. But now we're getting into specific situations and those are always tricky because there's so many of them. Generically speaking I don't think it costs more to go multi-platform than exclusive so every additional sale is a plus.
I definitely agree that Amazon's competitors are currently their own worst enemies but we're talking about why Amazon dominance is bad-and as long as it lowers costs I don't think the dominance is bad. If it ever raises costs for consumers then I think they'll find the competitors relatively better. But who knows? I tend to believe people 'vote' with their wallets but I've been wrong before. Could be I'm wrong again and people will pay more for convenience, an interface that lets them find what they want, recommendations that really suit them, etc. But for now I'm betting that they'll use Amazon to search for what they want then check competitors to see who has the best price. As long as Amazon does, and only that long, will people continue buying there.