Quote:
Originally Posted by Propheous
I think amazon will have a cheaper price point for a while. It helps to have a captive audience to appease the retailers. If you think about it right now, amazon is one of the most appealing sites to sell your e-book with from a business perspective because of its DRM, and customer base. B&N has DRM as well, but being a brick and motor company they have a disadvantage of increase overhead. In the end I think the prices will start to come with in a close call, but that end is still a ways off. If the nook steals a solid market share I think it may find its in B&N's best interest to start price matching as a way to steal greater market share. B&N is not at that point yet and we will have to wait for the dust to settle on the nook before we see any concrete moves.
|
The question of price can already be answered, since B&N has been selling ebooks for a while now. It would just take a 3-way comparison between Amazon, B&N and Sony to see who fares best.
I remember the latest Dan Brown POS... er Tome... costing the least at B&N ebooks when it hit the format.
The good news is this opens up greater competition. Sony wasn't really a serious threat to Amazon, and all the other small shops even less so. B&N is already perceived as a book store, so that legitimizes the connection between the Nook and the Store... just as Amazon was immediately legit with the Kindle. So they are going to really be head-to-head.
Hopefully, this will lead to the bigger development: an single format that
all readers can access. We're heading toward ePUB at this point. And all three are using DRM at this point, so if
any of these retailers croak, so do your books.
-Pie