New "top of the line Kindle" details coming next week

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

As per outright lying, I would say no. I would say he is saying what he wants people to believe is the truth.

Otherwise known as lying.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Otherwise known as lying.

Now darling, down here we don't call it lying. We call it male bovine excrement.

[frahse]

Originally Posted by bshar489

Apparently all it took was for me to finally take the plunge and order a Voyage I had been going back and forth in my head for months on whether to or not and when I saw they were $50 off I decided to go ahead. Now I wait and see if I will be kicking myself for not waiting a few more months

Bergette

An old dilemma. When to stop waiting.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Now darling, down here we don't call it lying. We call it male bovine excrement.

We call it politics as usual...

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Are you saying the industry source is outright lying?

I didn't say he was lying.

Propaganda falls into a category similar to marketing. Neither is the factual truth, but since they are an accepted "truth" you can't call them a lie.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Now darling, down here we don't call it lying. We call it male bovine excrement.

In my circles the polite term is "factually incorrect".
It sidesteps the question of whether they are lying outright or merely misinformed.

By now it is painfully obvious that there is a lot of misinformation flowing in the traditionalist camp (we've all seen some of the whoppers, right?) so people end up saying and doing stupid things because they don't understand the new world ebooks have created. These are people who still don't fully understand the consequences the 1995 revolution that is online sales of pbooks, old and new, much less the 2007 ebook evolution that mainstreamed ebooks or the effects of the conspiracy that led to the rise of Indies. They think and act like it's still 1994 and when reality doesn't match their expectations they lash out at the "obvious" target, the chief beneficiary of the continuing waves of change.

They simply fail to see the bigger picture.
Mostly because they aren't used to authors and readers having real power. Until they accept that reality they will keep on getting blindsided by every new development.

Which brings us back on topic: Bezos may simply be changing his twitter approach or maybe he had a few minutes of free time after being briefed by the Lab126 crew on the new Kindles and was impressed enough to throw out a teaser. But we're all wondering what is coming because a new Kindle might be a game changer, yet another big development: it might be the first workable academic ereader or a "good enough" color reader that can handle comics, magazines, cookbooks and other non-fiction...
...or it might not.

It might simply be a refinement of existing capabilities.
We won't know until next week, if at all.
If it truly is something new, it's impact might not be immediately apparent. The full impact of the first Kindle took years to ripple out. (Or more recently, of the Echo, which instead of being merely an online connected speaker for music streaming turned out to be a home automation trojan.)

It is one of the reasons why tracking technology is so fascinating: sometimes a new development is a pebble thrown into a pond, sometimes it's a boulder. And we rarely know which it is until later.

In the meantine, we kill time speculating and fantasizing...

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Rizla

You can try to blame agency pricing for walled-gardens, but the truth is it's Amazon's natural business model. They learned from Apple who were able to monetize online-audio by erecting a walled-garden and tying it to a popular and exclusive hardware platform, just like Amazon. Amazon has never shown the slightest inclination to an open system.

Apple's music is DRM-free, isn't it?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shane R

Apple's music is DRM-free, isn't it?

These days, yes. That wasn't the case originally, at the insistence of the record companies.

[Shane R]

Originally Posted by Phogg

What Apple brought was not new concepts, groundbreaking hardware, or better pricing. Apple brought a massive preestablished customer base and a monolithic public relations hype machine.

That's not quite right. The iPod is rightly considered iconic; there were MP3 players before it, but none like it. And there was no massive pre-established customer base - the iPod didn't sell in any appreciable numbers until Apple made it available for purchase to Windows users.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I didn't say he was lying.

Propaganda falls into a category similar to marketing. Neither is the factual truth, but since they are an accepted "truth" you can't call them a lie.

The description "accepted lie" is as apt or probably more apt than "accepted truth". Marketing can produce both truth and lies. It's the presentation that counts, and that is mostly misleading by omission or emphasis. In appropriate cases we can certainly call out a claim as a lie. In this case I would not do so. It is speculation based on little evidence. Nevertheless it may be true.

Amazon didn't force agency on the Conspirators. But I doubt Amazon wants to go back to it now. The days of Amazon subsidising the Big 5's inflated pricing policies are over. Even if there is a return to a wholesale model, it is not now in Amazon's interest to discount their books from its own pocket. Though of course the beauty of Agency is that it places the blame for high prices squarely where it belongs. And Amazon makes sure that this message isn't lost on Purchasers by stating that the price is set by the Publisher. As the Big 5 finally face the fact that their books are not so superior as to form a separate market and they therefore are competing with Indies they will also have to face the facts that reduced prices must be funded from their own pockets. Of course, under traditional publishing contracts much of the pain is often passed to the authors. But if this continues they will have few authors in the future.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Shane R

Apple's music is DRM-free, isn't it?

Try and extract Apple music onto a Windows system. Sheesh. What a pain.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Try and extract Apple music onto a Windows system. Sheesh. What a pain.

What's difficult about it? Just run iTunes and download it.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I didn't say he was lying.

Propaganda falls into a category similar to marketing. Neither is the factual truth, but since they are an accepted "truth" you can't call them a lie.

The source of the original blog is an industry insider, and so was his father. I don't believe he's misguided / misinformed. He's too deep in for that. He's either got a point or he's lying (call it what you want).

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by darryl

The description "accepted lie" is as apt or probably more apt than "accepted truth". Marketing can produce both truth and lies. It's the presentation that counts, and that is mostly misleading by omission or emphasis. In appropriate cases we can certainly call out a claim as a lie. In this case I would not do so. It is speculation based on little evidence. Nevertheless it may be true.

I have to work with marketing people, for example, so i can't call it a lie.

Originally Posted by darryl

Amazon didn't force agency on the Conspirators. But I doubt Amazon wants to go back to it now. The days of Amazon subsidising the Big 5's inflated pricing policies are over. Even if there is a return to a wholesale model, it is not now in Amazon's interest to discount their books from its own pocket. Though of course the beauty of Agency is that it places the blame for high prices squarely where it belongs. And Amazon makes sure that this message isn't lost on Purchasers by stating that the price is set by the Publisher. As the Big 5 finally face the fact that their books are not so superior as to form a separate market and they therefore are competing with Indies they will also have to face the facts that reduced prices must be funded from their own pockets. Of course, under traditional publishing contracts much of the pain is often passed to the authors. But if this continues they will have few authors in the future.

I don't know that Amazon wanted to go back to agency, but they certainly didn't fight very hard to prevent it.

At a minimum, Amazon willingly gave the publishers the rope they needed to hang themselves.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I don't know that Amazon wanted to go back to agency, but they certainly didn't fight very hard to prevent it.

At a minimum, Amazon willingly gave the publishers the rope they needed to hang themselves.

So there is some truth in the article? From what I recall, the article states that Amazon wants agency pricing. So they didn't fight very hard against it? So what is the true case? It sounds to me like you're saying that, yes, Amazon do want to keep agency pricing. *confused*