Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin
Sure Amazon and B&N struck blows. Every time Amazon sold a book at a loss or added another benefit to its Prime program it struck a blow. Fictionwise sold out to B&N because it saw the handwriting on the wall -- it couldn't compete in the long-term, and they realized this before agency. BoB was always an iffy proposition. It would run big sales in hopes of gaining new loyal customers but the customers didn't stay; they only came for sales that were not sustainable.
The idea that the small ebookstores were doing "fairly well until agency" is an unsupported conclusion. eBookstores came and went frequently and BoB was known to be struggling and was the subject of threads here on MR to that effect.
More importantly, any business that can only sustain itself as long as there is no deviation from its original business plan is a business doomed from the start.
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Fundamentally, in a race to the bottom, the company with the deepest pockets is going to win. unless of course, they decide the game is not worth it. It's fairly obvious that part of Amazon's current strategy is to go after the ebooks as commodities market. Invest heavily in indies and hope that the customers are more concerned with price than specific authors. If you want to read generic books, then the only thing better than all you can read for $100 a year, is the free (i.e. public library and PD books).