Quote:
Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
But between Hatchette and Amazon--Amazon wants to bring more books in front of me, Hatchette wants to restrict the books I see. Amazon wants to sell more at a lower price, Hatchette wants to charge me more. Arguments on worth are useless--what is the right price? Is Ogletree worth less because I borrowed it from the library? All I do know is I cannot loan or resell or donate ebooks. So they should be quite a bit less than pbooks. I don't know what the thought process was behind releasing ebooks at the same time as hardcovers. I am sure Amazon wanted it, to create interest for the kindle. But what did the publishers think was going to happen when they released two competing products at the same time? They must have been betting ebooks would fail. But they didn't count on Amazon and Oprah.
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Oprah really freaked them out.
What they were thinking was that ebooks would forever be a niche for techies and enthusiasts, like many European markets still are (low single digit penetration). Then, suddenly Oprah gave Kindle mainstream visibility and a boost to ebook sales.
Panic set in.
After that it has been one mistep after another.