Quote:
Originally Posted by ingmar
No, it's lack of competition. Amazon is large in Europe, too, but there are alternatives. In Germany most of the other chain book stores got together and founded the "Tolino" alliance. They've been keeping Amazon on their toes ever since.
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I think the problem is that Amazon has too little competition in the selling of any sort of books at all. Between them, Barnes and Noble, and Borders bought out most of the smaller book store chains and pretty much decimated the independent book stores even before ebooks became an item. That left the two giant booksellers easy targets for Amazon once online commerce got started.
Independent bookstores have always relied on developing a relationship with customers, something that the big chains never did. I personally know only a few people who feel any kind of relationship with any bookstore. Lacking that, most people buy their books on price and convenience alone. Personally, I feel like I have a relationship with an indie bookstore. I am unwilling to go on lugging a pile of paper books but I am willing (if not overeager) to pay a dollar or two extra to get my ebooks from
my bookstore.
Kobo is America’s independent bookstore brand and they are still in the game. The latest Kobo hardware is much better than some readers of these forums would have you think. Sadly, America’s independent bookstores seem to have lost faith in their own survival and only halfheartedly support selling eBooks. (Or at times, even the paper ones.)
Amazon’s business model relies on their shareholders/board of directors allowing them to go on year after year without paying a single dollar in dividends. That works while their stock value keeps going up and their shareholders can take their profit in stock value, thus gaining the tax advantage of growing wealth over income. It seems to me that the model will max out someday when there is no longer anywhere for Amazon to expand so profitably, or alternatively, until Amazon becomes a true monopoly in the book business and are sued and broken up by the government’s regulators.