Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
It's not that Amazon is evil. But if Amazon gets such a big market share that suppliers can't plausibly stop doing business with them, and Amazon doesn't use that market power to squeeze said suppliers, there eventually will be a stockholder revolt. Jeff Bezos probably can withstand that, but Amazon will eventually come under great pressure to monetize its market power.
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If the publishers want to diminish Amazon's dominance in ebook retailing, they should drop DRM and/or refuse to sell ebooks using a proprietary format. I don't have an Amazon ereader, but Amazon has one of the easiest websites to navigate and buy ebooks. With DRM and a proprietary ebook ereader that doesn't allow someone to buy DRMd ebooks and sideload it onto the ereader, the publishers are ensuring the average ebook buyer will never buy one of their ebooks from any other retailer. Their solution was to hitch their wagon to another retailer with a closed system with a proprietary ebook format, albeit with fixed retail prices and a fixed gross margin. Of course, unlike Amazon and Walmart, Apple's never been about keeping prices low.