Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben Thornton
But this was my point. If others on this thread are right in saying that they make their money from content, why not open up another channel to sell that content through?
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They have 3 other channels, as mentioned. If you want eink, they want you to use their eink reader so you are tied to their store, if you don't, they want you to use their applications so you are tied to their store. They do the same thing with video -- the unbox software for PCs is req'd to use the service, and they have a special deal with Tivo to pipe it there as well. They cant' do that with music because the market has spoken so loudly in re: mp3 format, they don't have the clout to resist.
The real answer to your question of why books are treated different is that Amazon is dominant with books. If they were dominant in music or video, they could get away with tighter controls still. Since kindle editions make up such a large part of the market, Amazon is to ebooks as iTunes was to music.
Hopefully they turn out similarly -- and maybe once Amazon feels they have built up enough brand loyalty that they no longer need tight format controls to lock you down, they'll transition their store to something more open the same way iTunes went mp3 once they'd managed to build a little empire using tight DRM.