|
People tend to overestimate the strength of loss-leader policies. Amazon was indeed building a market with a privileged share in it, but eventually they would have had to back off, since loss-leader policies can't be kept in place indefinitely as they are, by definition, unprofitable.
In the other hand, the collusion (because that's the word for it) which the publishers have been building and that Apple has allowed to trigger, would be VERY profitable in the long term if they win the war.
Far be it from me to defend 1984mazon, but from the POV of a buyer of books, I have a company which is sacrificing profits and selling me cheap books to entice me, and I have another company (because the collusion means that those Fearsome Five act as a sole company) which is trying to maximize their profit and selling me uber-expensive books. Which, by the way, are potentially subject to the same control that Amazon exercises on their books. The difference of value between AZW books and DRM'd ePubs is 0, since they're the same text, crippled in the same ways.
|