Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
I doubt selling more Kindles was the primary or even a significant motivation for Amazon discounting of new releases. Amazon tends to plan long term. The more readers in its walled garden, the more money it makes from books. And of course many of those readers became Amazon customers generally, buying Prime, Music and the many different products Amazon offers. So far as books are concerned, once in the Amazon walled garden readers were seeing not only Big 5 new releases but also KDP and later Amazon imprint books. Competing directly without obvious differentiation. And securing for Amazon an increasingly important source of books independent of the large traditional publishers. Amazon's discounting of new releases not only drew attention to the lack of price competition in tradpub but brought many new readers to Amazon at a time when it was needed. By the time the tradpub cartel had lost or settled with the DOJ and their contracts for Amazon came up for negotiation, Amazon saw no need to continue this practice. It continues this day to distance itself from the prices of e-book new releases by making clear that the price is set by the publisher. Self-published, Indie published and Amazon imprint sales continue to boom and at least anecdotally grow. And for those who continue to buy print books, many now buy from Amazon.
Posts which talk about Amazon seeking to gut Tradpub's business model imply that there is something wrong with this. But that model depended on the lack of price competition in a tradpub market best described as a shared monopoly or an oligopoly. And the tool which Amazon used? Price competition. The very heart and soul of a capitalist system. And the holy grail so far as the prevailing Chicago School of anti-trust law in the US is concerned, which puts the consumer above all else.
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You question why it's bad for a monopolistic company to gut it's suppliers' business model? Fortunately, at the end of the day, Amazon was unsuccessful and predicted demise of the traditional publishers was grossly exaggerated. Major authors haven't abandoned the traditional publishers for the Amazon's indie market as predicted by some here.
The bottom line is that while most here like eBooks, they never became mainstream for a number of reasons. Unless that happens, there is very little incentive for major authors to move to a mostly digital book (eBook and audiobook) business model.