Quote:
Originally Posted by Robotech_Master
The point is, if you pay attention to his post, Scalzi was saying Amazon could still have done exactly the same thing, pulled all Macmillan's books and stuff, but just done a little more than that, like announcing beforehand what they were doing and why, coming out with a press release explaining its side before Macmillan was able to get one off (Amazon still hasn't come out with anything other than that strangely-worded Kindle Team post), and just generally not leaving so many people to get angry in the dark.
Amazon would have looked a lot better to the community at large, and not left authors feeling quite so jerked-around.
As it is now, to everyone except consumers who don't want to pay higher prices, Amazon ends up looking like a spoiled brat. And we all know just how much consumers matter to the big publishing houses, right?
|
I personally don't think that Amazon was posturing or trying to garner public opinion. I think they were convinced it's a battle for the future of their business and they were never going to have a more powerful bargaining position then now.
If they can't change the selling price what can they do to grow market share or keep market share? There is very little service value they can add to a website. I don't think they believe they can grow market share by building better devices then Apple.
Apple can grow market share with this deal because they currently have 0%. People will buy books from iBooks because they're already buying music, video, apps, TV shows from iTunes.
I'll be interested to see why Amazon caved. They've either decided that time is on their side and they can wait it out for a better deal or they have some other plan. Maybe they intend to battle it legally. Maybe they are waiting for the other publishers to jump on the bandwagon and have politicians jump on them as a cartel. Maybe they think they can offer rebates like Fictionwise.
My fear is that they will go down the route of exclusive deals to grow market share.