MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Amazon Kindle might be the worst thing that could happen to e-books?

Monteagle · 11-19-2007, 07:05 PM

Instinct tells us that a big outfit like Amazon is a good place to store books on their server. That's dead wrong. A year ago, Amazon very quietly and unilaterally deleted the ebook bookshelves of tens of thousands of ebook customers that had been buying from them for years. No explanation was given.

Two months ago, Amazon's Mobipocket server went down in Paris. It stayed down for ten days during which no one could download their Mobipocket ebooks.

Yet, in spite of this very recent history, Amazon wants us to believe in the warm comfort of their servers to offload these books since one audiobook might use up ALL the space available on it.

Bottom-line: Amazon has no loyalty to ebook customers, only to its profit center. If Kindle stumbles, then the buyers of the device and the books that go on it may well have nothing but bad memories.

As to the 9.99 price, the publishers should be driving this for ebooks themselves, but they're not. Instead, Amazon is pricing well below cost in most cases, undermining other honorable ebook retailers that have stuck it out through all the device mis-steps. Under other Justice Departments, this violated a range of anti-trust conditions. It will be interesting to see if the current one has the courage to step in. Amazon is guilty of predatory pricing as the dominant market player in books. They want to reduce the consuemr to only one choice for ebooks: Amazon. Then, if Amazon stays in the ebook business, it will be interesting how quickly that "free" whispernet service starts costing every one $30 per month. Some folks can still remember when basic cable TV was free.

We should support the smaller ebook retailers that have to care about the individual customer (because they don't have the Amazon war chest to replace lost customers by buying more). BooksOnBoard, Fictionwise, eReader.com, to name a few. BooksOnBoard seems to have matched - and in some cases beaten - Amazon Kindle pricing for now. Fictionwise also does this with many of their titles.

11-19-2007, 07:05 PM	#62
Monteagle Member Posts: 16 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: Treo 700w	Storing on Amazon servers = high risk Instinct tells us that a big outfit like Amazon is a good place to store books on their server. That's dead wrong. A year ago, Amazon very quietly and unilaterally deleted the ebook bookshelves of tens of thousands of ebook customers that had been buying from them for years. No explanation was given. Two months ago, Amazon's Mobipocket server went down in Paris. It stayed down for ten days during which no one could download their Mobipocket ebooks. Yet, in spite of this very recent history, Amazon wants us to believe in the warm comfort of their servers to offload these books since one audiobook might use up ALL the space available on it. Bottom-line: Amazon has no loyalty to ebook customers, only to its profit center. If Kindle stumbles, then the buyers of the device and the books that go on it may well have nothing but bad memories. As to the 9.99 price, the publishers should be driving this for ebooks themselves, but they're not. Instead, Amazon is pricing well below cost in most cases, undermining other honorable ebook retailers that have stuck it out through all the device mis-steps. Under other Justice Departments, this violated a range of anti-trust conditions. It will be interesting to see if the current one has the courage to step in. Amazon is guilty of predatory pricing as the dominant market player in books. They want to reduce the consuemr to only one choice for ebooks: Amazon. Then, if Amazon stays in the ebook business, it will be interesting how quickly that "free" whispernet service starts costing every one $30 per month. Some folks can still remember when basic cable TV was free. We should support the smaller ebook retailers that have to care about the individual customer (because they don't have the Amazon war chest to replace lost customers by buying more). BooksOnBoard, Fictionwise, eReader.com, to name a few. BooksOnBoard seems to have matched - and in some cases beaten - Amazon Kindle pricing for now. Fictionwise also does this with many of their titles.