Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
There is one source that was apparently credible enough for the AU/AG whiners to forward to the DOJ: according to the gold-plated ones, Amazon commands 85% of Indie ebook sales.
According to a survey a few months back, they control 90% of the ebook subscription service market, small though it may be (relatively speaking). That last is critical because KU is already delivering more rental income to Indies than they make in sales at Nook et al.
That is not healthy.
If those folks don't get their Indie sales act in gear things will get dangerous by next year.
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I agree. In fact, I think things are even worse. To me KU is the only subscription service with a sustainable business model. As I understand the position, and please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, the others subscription services are essentially paying the Big 5 an equivalent amount to a sale for every borrow. Which of course is simply not sustainable. Big Publishing still, despite everything, seems to want to foster the sales of nothing but print books, preferably hard covers. Not ebooks. Not subscription services. In fact, not any innovation whatsoever.
It was no accident that Amazon started KDP at the same time as they launched the first Kindle. Whilst I doubt they had KU in mind, I'm sure they did foresee the boom in self-publishing if the Kindle did take off, and of course the value of a supply of relatively cheap ebooks free of the BPH. To be both competitive and sustainable, other subscription services will need either real support from the BPH, or a source of Indies, or preferably both. Amazon, of course, has a lot of its Indies on exclusive terms. Competing subscription services may need to entice some of these Indies to go non-exclusive. Or, of course, go with a competing self-publishing platform. Maybe partner with or buy one of the existing ones and pump money into it. A difficult task and maybe an impossible one against one of the most innovative and aggressive competitors on the planet.