Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
My first reaction, as a computer programmer, when reading such claims, has been that there is far more work in programming a truly competitive eCommerce site than in establishing physical stores.
The New Yorker article documents a whole other kind of barrier to entry. Amazon requires publishers to effectively sell them their books more cheaply than the price that would be granted to a new store:
...
|
Not really. I do very high traffic web pages for big companies and have been doing it for the past 15 years. Sure, it's not something that you are going to run out of your basement via your consumer quality 10 mbps internet connection, but the barrier to entry for a purely ebook store really isn't all that big. There are literally thousands of reasonably high traffic web stores out there. The issue is more of business (how do I make money at it) and creative (why would someone come to me rather than amazon) than a technical one.
Getting the needed contracts in place from the various rights holders is, of course, the big issue, but hardly a barrier.