Thread: The Vent and Rant Thread
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Old 02-03-2010, 01:58 AM   #7708
phenomshel
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney View Post
It's not just Macmillan. Hachette and Simon and Schuster are also in this dustup with Amazon. Amazon's results have forced them to take the ebook market seriously and realize it's large and growing.

Essentially, they want more control over pricing. Amazon established the $9.99 price point to get customers interested in eBooks, and the Kindle can be viewed as priming that particular pump. eBooks are a natural fit for Amazon, as they are already the world's largest catalog retailer, and the infrastructure is already in place to display the catalog to viewers and accept orders via the web. It's trivial to add fulfillment to that, with download upon payment, and there are no warehousing or shipping costs.

The publishers involved think Amazon's $9.99 standard price point sets an unrealistically low price customers will expect when it isn't reasonable, and fear that simultaneous release of Kindle editions will cut into more profitable hardcover sales.

They threatened to delay ebook release by four months to protect hardcover sales. Amazon countered by dropping some prices to $7.99. It went on from there.

Ultimately, Amazon is the retailer. They buy from the publishers, and the publishers can choose not to sell to them. Macmillan pulled the plug, and Amazon had no realistic choice but to capitulate.

Meanwhile, the titles may well be available elsewhere. But if you have a Kindle, you are locked into Amazon as the vendor. You can't buy them elsewhere, because they won't work on the Kindle.

Lots of people like the Kindle, like the breadth of content Amazon offers, and like the prices, and will accept vendor lock in return. Will, this is the flip side of that coin...

(It's also a major reason why I have no interest in a Kindle or in buying ebooks from Amazon.)
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Dennis
No, I do not own a Kindle,(vendor lock is why I don't), and up until Kindle for PC came out, I was locked out of buying several favorite authors, because they were only available through Amazon. Now I'm locked out again, due to greed and stupidity. I don't care whose fault it is, I just want to be able to buy the darned books!! As I have stated several times, the titles on my Amazon wishlist are those not available through any other retailer. That kind of prevents me from buying them anywhere else, don't you think?
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