Quote:
Originally Posted by leebase
I like everything else you said. However, Amazon was not on the side of making ebooks cheaper. Amazon was on their own side of buying up a market and running competitors out of business.
No? Well, Amazon had a choice to accept windowing over agency...allowing Amazon to continue selling ebooks at a loss. But no. Amazon knows that there is a finite time where interest is high and MOST of the sales of a book that are going to happen, happen. To be "windowed" out of the market would mean Amazon missing the market.....AND....it would make Amazon's Kindle tablet a LOT less appealing.
So Amazon chose their own self interest and gave pricing control to the publishers because, frankly, Amazon had already established their near monopoly position already.
|
I short-handed the discussion, because everyone here already know the story of Amazon vs. the BPHs. In short, the prices ended up lower. The morality of the how and why, and whether Amazon was the white hat or black, etc....meh. The net result to the consumer was, much lower prices for the buyer. Was Amazon selfish? Yup, but the end result, still in the buyers' favor.
Quote:
|
Amazon and Walmart both do work hard to lower prices....but as retailers so powerful that they can hammer the actual creators and manufacturers into submission. Sounds great for the consumer, until all the profit is taken out of a market killing further innovation.
|
It's an argument--but has it stifled creativity in the music biz? It seems to have done just the opposite, with garage bands now being the norm, able to publish cheap "records" and videos. The consumer gets to vote with the click.
Quote:
|
If you want the quality of Kindle Unlimited to become THE quality of books going forward...keep voting with your dollars for the $.99 Amazon ebook.
|
I won't be here in 50 years to see if that argument holds up--but I'm not convinced that it will. Great writers will still rise; books will still be written. You're somewhat cavalierly asserted that if Jane Doe author sells her book for $0.99, it's automatically bad. I'm not at all certain that I agree with you.
Hitch