Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
Because, as has been observed in some recently linked articles, the are NOT afraid of Amazon in any way. They WANT Amazon. They want Amazon's customers, and marketing, and storefront, and service, and they want it on THIER terms.
|
Right.
What they are, however, increasingly afraid of is indie publishing.
All the recent articles about the relevance of agents, the indispensability of publishers, and how hard and "expensive" publishing is are a sign that they are noticing all the sales that aren't going to their books. At Amazon, Kobo, Nook, and even (irony of ironies) Apple.
Right now, Indie books in both e- and p- are worth well over a billion a year (and growing) and that is a billion a year (and growing) that isn't going to tradpub. When you see reports that ebook sales growth is slowing, it is because a lot of the growth in ebooks overall isn't going to trackable tradpubs but to indies.
The BPHs and their proxies focus on Amazon, thinking that if they can get Amazon to bow before them they'll be able to marginalize indies at Amazon and put an end to the indie problem. Which is wrong. Just as ebooks are here to stay, so are Indies.
And while they waste time and money fighting Amazon over how much money to squeeze out of their sales the real threat continues to grow totally beyond their control.
The time to build up ebook alternatives to Amazon was 2010.
By now whether they do so or not is meaningless because any challenger to kindle is going to have to sell indie titles or fail. Right now, 30-40% of all ebooks sold are indie and that number is not going down. And few people are going to limit their options by committing to an ebookstore without indie titles.