Quote:
Originally Posted by TadW
O'Reilly misses the point. Amazon is NOT Microsoft. Amazon doesn't sell web server software. Amazon's strength is
1. their online shop
2. competitive pricing through market domination
While competitive pricing is probably important to most customers, the shop itself is also too important to be neglected. I love the Amazon website because it enables me to browse their shop for hours without feeling bored or distracted. I love reading the reviewers' comments; I love finding books that are related to my searches. And I love all the other features, such as reading people's personal best of lists.
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Further on in the article, O'Reilly compares Amazon and Apple, and I think makes his best point there. He points out that it wasn't just the iPod, or even iPod and iTunes, but the fact that users could add their own music from other sources, much of it free, that put the iPod, and later iTunes, on top. But the single biggest obstacle keeping an e-book system from becoming like the iPod model is the fact that, as O'Reilly points out, "There is no easy way to "rip" a book." So even the Apple comparison doesn't work for Amazon exactly.
I've said before that publishing can look at other business models all they want, but they really need to create their own modern business model, one that focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of literature, as opposed to emulating (and trying to avoid the mistakes of) other media.