Quote:
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A close associate of Bezos puts it more starkly: “What Amazon really wanted to do was make the price of e-books so low that people would no longer buy hardcover books. Then the next shoe to drop would be to cut publishers out and go right to authors.”
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So the Amazon camp is admitting that Bezos was using the Kindle and its pricing model as a means of taking control of the industry. When he says, '...go right to the authors,' you know he's not talking about downloading books from an independent author's website, he's talking about you putting money in Amazon's pocket.
I agree that the agency model is a terrible idea and one that will hopefully die a natural death as soon as it is no longer needed. But it's a protective mechanism against a single retailer that's grown too big and is ruthless in its desire to grow bigger. Of course, Jobs is just as ruthless in his megalomania.