Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
The BWM publishers are all about print books, not ebooks. One of the reasons they missed the boat on ebooks and delivered the initiative to Amazon on a silver platter is that they have been so fixated on preserving their profitable print book oligopoly. To have any chance of succeeding against Amazon at selling ebooks they would have to abandon this mindset. No windowing. Cheaper pricing. Damaging their own Print Book sales in favour of ebooks. And even then, they are a long way behind. And, i suggest, as others already have, that they lack the expertise and the entrepreneurial spirit to succeed against Amazon. Maybe Apple, Google or even Microsoft may be prepared to partner with them, in which case they may at least manage to provide some competition to Amazon. Once the car comes along the demand for buggies goes way down.
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Ultimately, for an ebook store to succeed, they need to be able to be a one stop shop that carries all the ebooks and supports all platforms. You have to have the infrastructure to support the story, the contracts with the various publishers to stock the store and the technical means to deliver content to a customer's ebook reader without the customer having to jump through hoops. Then you have to have enough cash on hand to build enough of a customer base, which may take a few years. That's a tough row to hoe.
Apple currently appears to be happy supporting the 90 percent of readers who are mostly interested in the best sellers.