Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The reason that Amazon have been so successful in the ebook market is precisely because they've made it so incredibly easy to buy books.
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If Amazon had every ebook ever made available for sale, then maybe this would be a valid point, but since they don't, and Kindle readers and apps only read Amazon books, then it's just another walled garden locking you in.
In addition, Amazon has taken back ebooks that people have "bought", so this shows that Amazon doesn't sell very many ebooks at all. They do rent a lot of books, and then put restrictions on them so that you can''t use them the way you would use a purchased (or even rented) physical book.
Yeah, they've been successful, and they are likely to continue to be because they now have the self-published sources pretty much locked up, but then many "successful" things were later replaced by things much better for consumers. Like Apple trying to "sell" DRM-laden music being replaced by companies that are up-front about the fact that it is a rental (Pandora, etc.). All-you-can-eat audio streaming was one of the things that forced Apple to drop DRM from music sales.
If Kindle Unlimited was actually that (borrow any book Amazon sells), then Amazon would discover that nobody would "buy" ebooks, because the extra selection and the truth (it's a rental) are something that people really want.