Quote:
Originally Posted by astra
There is only ebook shop with decent prices. It is Kindle store, the rest is rubbish.
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Comparing anyone's book price to the price at the Kindle store is a false comparison. For the moment, Amazon adheres to an unsustainable pricing model; for how long it will adhere to it is unknown. No company can forever sell product at less than cost and survive. Amazon is able to do it with the Kindle books only because Amazon's "profitability" can be maintained through its other sources, such as the Amazon Marketplace and the sale of pbooks.
The question is why does Amazon continue to sell ebooks at a loss? The only apparent answer to me is that it wants to corner the ebook market -- both hardware and "software" -- using the low costs of ebooks as the inducement to buy the Kindle. Yes, I understand that the user of a Kindle can buy ebooks from sources other than Amazon, but the reality is that most purchasers of a Kindle probably confine their ebook shopping to the Kindle store and Amazon reinforces this tendency by offering low prices.
But at some point that will need to change as the pressure from investors for Amazon to increase profitability increases. Right now Bezos hasn't been forced to put numbers to Kindle device or ebook sales and profitability. When he is forced to do so, the low price of Kindle ebooks may well disappear
or Amazon will have so altered the marketplace that ebook prices will have dropped for everyone at all ebookstores.