"Is Government the Only Force Able to End Amazon Dominance?"

[jersysman]

Another poorly written attempt to bash Amazon. Again, it just amplifies something that I have heard for many years - be careful of what you wish for - because you may just get it. Amazon just took advantage of the publisher's hope to take advantage of the consumer with their crazy schemes.

[kennyc]

Yes, we're on the verge of a whole new publishing paradigm.

Maybe we need to grant Amazon a monopoly as we did with the phone system??

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kennyc

By that logic EVERY CORPORATION IN THE WORLD should be SHUT DOWN or controlled by THE GOVERNMENT!

and is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Hey, it works for the Chinese!
(Not so well everywhere else, but still...)

Why let facts get in the way of preconceived notions, right?
It is easier to bash Amazon than to research the facts and understand why they're successful.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

...
It is easier to bash Amazon than to research the facts and understand why they're successful.

Truth.

[JoHunt]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

It is easier to bash Amazon than to research the facts and understand why they're successful.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kennyc

By that logic EVERY CORPORATION IN THE WORLD should be SHUT DOWN or controlled by THE GOVERNMENT!

and is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Not every corporation so actively and successfully dodges tax and many of them treat their workforce far better than Amazon. So I disagree with your point.

And I directly answered your post, so you were irrelevant first :P

[kennyc]

You're welcome to disagree, but you are wrong.

[tubemonkey]

I like cheap prices

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I like cheap prices

Wal-Mart Monkey, eh?

They've got a great record wrt employees.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kennyc

You're welcome to disagree, but you are wrong.

Lmao. Well said!

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Why let facts get in the way of preconceived notions, right?
It is easier to bash Amazon than to research the facts and understand why they're successful.

How utterly true!

[Lemurion]

The article would make a lot more sense if they understood what they were talking about.

[Katsunami]

But some industry observers say that the real villain is not Amazon, but Adobe. As one senior figure put it: “Because they are the only system that anyone else can use they charge massive license feels to retailers and publishers. They are torture. They are the monopoly that exploits us in my view, not Amazon.”

This makes every non-Amazon book more expensive than it needs to be.

Not having read the article, I do find Adobe to be torture. They are ^%&$%@$% EVERYWHERE. Sometimes, they seem to own about every standard in the world from DNG for pictures to PDF for printable documents, to EPUB for books, not to mention that there are no professional alternatives for programs such as Photoshop.

There is no use trying to develop one, because the market has invested itself too deeply into Adobe products. Have you ever seen Corel Graphics Suite (the only viable professional alternative, IMHO) used somewhere, for example? I haven't; not in The Netherlands.

Adobe is to standards what Google is to the internet: it's practically almost impossible not to get involved with them some way or another.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

This makes every non-Amazon book more expensive than it needs to be.

Not having read the article, I do find Adobe to be torture. They are ^%&$%@$% EVERYWHERE. Sometimes, they seem to own about every standard in the world from DNG for pictures to PDF for printable documents, to EPUB for books, not to mention that there are no professional alternatives for programs such as Photoshop.

There is no use trying to develop one, because the market has invested itself too deeply into Adobe products. Have you ever seen Corel Graphics Suite (the only viable professional alternative, IMHO) used somewhere, for example? I haven't; not in The Netherlands.

Adobe is to standards what Google is to the internet: it's practically almost impossible not to get involved with them some way or another.

A lot of digital artists are deep into Corel Painter for its natural media simulation but even in their market Adobe has its hooks. And yes, they are ubiquitous in the media businesses; everybody buys Adobe because everybody else buys Adobe.

I'm no fan of Adobe but I haven't heard of them sending kneecappers to the BPHs to force them to use DRM. If the Adobe hegemony is too big a handicap they are free to take note of the TOR experiment. There are no chains so tight as the ones we forge ourselves.

I read the article and the only vaguely hopeful sign in there is, in fact, the belated recognition that publishing has an Adobe problem. That's the first step, admitting they have a problem.

11 to go.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

This makes every non-Amazon book more expensive than it needs to be.

Not having read the article, I do find Adobe to be torture. They are ^%&$%@$% EVERYWHERE. Sometimes, they seem to own about every standard in the world from DNG for pictures to PDF for printable documents, to EPUB for books, not to mention that there are no professional alternatives for programs such as Photoshop.

There is no use trying to develop one, because the market has invested itself too deeply into Adobe products. Have you ever seen Corel Graphics Suite (the only viable professional alternative, IMHO) used somewhere, for example? I haven't; not in The Netherlands.

Adobe is to standards what Google is to the internet: it's practically almost impossible not to get involved with them some way or another.

Yes hard to not use adobe if you do anything with PDF, not impossible, and not altogether unreasonable as they pretty much developed PDF AFAIK.

I am not too concerned about the 22 cents they charge for DRM either. One part of me says hey maybe I can save 22 cents elsewhere and the other part of me says 'Get a grip'. In my current menial job I make 50+ cents a minute and I could get a better job in less than the time it would take me to save 22 cents on say 10 books. Fortunately or unfortunately I like my current job so I don't bother.

Helen