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Originally Posted by John F
If Amazon isn't stocking them, I assume other online retailers will. From the article, there is a picture of the B&M of Strand; checking their website, they do online pbook sales. Although I do like Amazon, if I was buying pbooks and Amazon didn't stock them, I would try somewhere else.
Of course if the publishers aren't shipping, there will be a problem.
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Not a safe assumption. Amazon's footprint is much bigger than the 50% they sell themselves: A lot of onlne retailers selling from their own websites are actually merchants using Amazon services.
Most of the others are independent bookstores shipping from their (now closed) storefronts. Plus they don't ship all that much compared to even B&N, which is the only "big" online competitor to Amazon. Even HalfPrice and BAM pale before those two.
What the big publishers have been officially worried about with ebooks was Amazon controlling too much market share. Their "solution" was to marginalize ebooks in favor of print, counting on channel diversity though B&N, Ingram, Hudson, and the regional chains. Instead of trying for a broad and varied interoperable ebook marketplace. But all that diversity is B&M-driven and even combined is still a fraction of Amazon. For some publishers, Amazon is 70% or higher. (Ironically, Hachette has been cited even higher, 74%.)
As a result the big publishers now report ebooks sales of less than 25% and most closer to 20%. And now that 75% is shuttered or at risk.
Their best hope is that stymied pbook buyers move to ebooks instead of video streaming or gaming. Cause theaters are gone and broadcast and cable networks work on a delayed "film as you go" system that has shut down for at least a few weeks.
Libraries are budget limited so they won't be able to absorb much new volume.
This might result in higher sales at Apple and Google, which would be good long term, but if they go to Amazon...
Not sure how much higher Kindle can possibly go.
What isn't clear right now is Ingram.
They distribute books to everybody not named Amazon or B&N.
And if they shut down it might be Amazon or nothing.
The entire industry is still focused on personal interaction and B&M (and, grudgingly, Amazon) and both are subect to pandemic restrictions. And Amazon itself is struggling with the pandemic, adding 100,000 new employees and raising salaries to get them. Deploying those resources to low margin pbook is not the best behavior in times of crisis.
The post pandemic world is going to be very different even in the best of cases.