Quote:
Originally Posted by barryem
Amazon isn't a distributor. It's a retailer. If only one retailer can sell a book it's obvious that other retailers can't compete. I'm not a lawyer and I wasn't stating a legal case. I was giving my opinion of the situation. Exclusive deals prevent competition, by definition.
Barry
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"Amazon" is a distributor as well as a retailer.
For indie books they are both with KDP being the distributor and Kindle the retailer. (See below.) So are "Kobo" and "Nook".
Some products Amazon sells themselves but others they merely connect the consumer to the actual retailer. They actually make more money that way than selling their own inventory, in fact.
It gets confusing because the various arms of the octopus operate under the same brand name but there is a difference between Amazon.com Inc and Amazon.COM LLC. Amazon.com is the online store while Amazon inc is the parent company that owns KDP, APub, Audible, AmazonBusiness, Lab126, and all the other standalone units. Very confusing, in fact. Amazon these days is a conglomerate of companies (like GE) rather than a single company.
In this context, the Company the Publisher deals with is KDP, which distributes the digital product to the Kindle store and the print editions to Amazon.com *and* Ingram. (Under the optional extended distribution contracts.) Audio deals with Audible are separate but can be linked. To make it all more confusing, KDP is open to any publisher, small or big, Traditional or Indie, but the BPHs and some medium publishers deal directly with Amazon.com.
Smashwords, Direct2Digital, XinXii, Kobo Writing Life, Overdrive, and NookPublishing, etc, are all distributors, too. Ingram, iBooks and the now shuttered Google operation, too. (Just harder/more expensive to deal with.) The publisher chooses which distributors to use or not use. (Note that the "Kobo" and "Nook" distributors are also separate operations that allow distribution to the Kobo and nook ebookstores, but also to other channels like Tolino and Overdrive (for Kobo Writing Life) or B&N (for NookPublishing).
The publisher side is very different from the consumer side. What we see is not what they see. That is also a factor in choosing KDP Select vs wider distribution. Dealing with all available distributors take time and effort and given the weakness of most of the non-Kindle ebook channels many Indies don't see the return ($$$) as justifying the effort. The most common approach these days is to go exclusive on Digital but wide (expanded distribution) on print, at least during career ramp up. It takes at least as much effort to manage distribution to Kobo or Nook or iBooks or whatever as on KDP but with KDP accounting for three times the aggregate sales as all the others combined (And KU aggregate payouts outpacing the other channels) the temptation to go Select is very strong.
All authors would prefer a more competitive environment on principle but that's not the world we live in. In the world we live in, for most Indies going wide doesn't pay as well as going Exclusive.
And Money trumps "principle" for most publisher, big or small.