Kindle only

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Sony tried that before going with ePub. It was the fault of Mobipocket/Amazon that Sony did not go with Mobipocket.

Amazon changed the Mobipocket SDK ToS to restrict against using Mobipocket on a system that supports another form of DRM. Sony's option would have been to completely drop their LRF file format, leaving everyone who'd already purchased books completely out in the dark, or go with ePub/ADEPT. Also considering that books purchased for the Kindle aren't directly compatible with plain jane MobiPocket, due to how Amazon handles PID's, there wasn't much of a reason to go that way. If I remember right, Sony did comment at one point that Mobi was considered.

Originally Posted by carld

If they don't do Kindle then they aren't customers.

They don't even have the chance to be customers. A customer is someone who buys a product or service from you. In this case, by choosing to be exclusive in one format, you're refusing to accept money from anyone who doesn't use that format.

Originally Posted by ApK

Saying a billion dollar company with the most successful ereader, and most popular ebook store is "shooting themselves in the foot" for not taking another path might be slightly over-stating it.

I'd agree that they could reach even more people and and have even more happy customers by adopting ADE/epub.

The most recent study I've seen shows that world wide the Kindle has a 48% market share. Basically if you're exclusive kindle, you're telling every other prospective buyer that you're not willing to accept their money.

Originally Posted by ucfgrad93

Why not?

If you multiquote, then things will not appear properly to those who view the forum using the threaded option. It only is useful to those who view posts in a linear fashion.

[ucfgrad93]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

If you multiquote, then things will not appear properly to those who view the forum using the threaded option. It only is useful to those who view posts in a linear fashion.

Ah, that is interesting. I didn't know that there was an option to view it in a threaded format.

Karma to you sir.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Multi Quote is nice because you don't scroll through 15 posts by the same person who is quoting other people. I fail to see why 5 -15 posts is somehow better then one post that includes the 5-15 quotes any way.

And you have to have your thoughts in line for all 5-15 replies at one time. You try that and see how it goes.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

The most recent study I've seen shows that world wide the Kindle has a 48% market share. Basically if you're exclusive kindle, you're telling every other prospective buyer that you're not willing to accept their money.

This report is well written. But I don't know if the numbers can be trusted since there are no hard and fast numbers out there. And I don't see how to get numbers from every single reader maker there is. So really, I think these numbers may be incorrect. 48% I think is too high given that I think they don't have all the numbers from all the manufacturers.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by rdfry

The Macintosh didn't have preemptive multitasking until OS 10 hows that for being innovative?

Preemptive multitasking came for free by switching to a unixish system. That could have been done at any time in the life of the macintosh. They also did not get time right until they switched to unix.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Many folks have explained multi-quote to him but he never uses multi-quote. How do you think his post count got so high? He responds to every pro-Kindle post with an anti-Mobi and Amazon is closed rant. Then he responds to all the responses to his silly comment with an individual post.

A lot of his post count comes from answering already answered questions with answers that have already been given.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

The most recent study I've seen shows that world wide the Kindle has a 48% market share.[/URL] Basically if you're exclusive kindle, you're telling every other prospective buyer that you're not willing to accept their money.

Let's say that there are two ebook buyers in the whole world.

If they both buy a book from Amazon and one of them also buys from somewhere else, then Amazon have a 66% market share, but 100% percent of the customers.
In other words, even if that 48% is correct, we know many people buy from Amazon AND other places as well, so Amazon may have far more than 48% of ebook buyers as their customers. (Or there could be just one guy buying 48% of all the ebooks from Amazon.....)

And in any case, you are mistaken: Amazon will happily take anyone's money...they can read their Kindle books in the cloud viewer, or on their computer, or Android device, or iThing. Amazon will even happily take their money and give them a Kindle to read on.

What Amazon is discouraging, is for someone to buy a competing device (which is most likely integrated with a competing ebook store), and by all market accounts, their strategy has worked brilliantly. Again, they seriously seem to not need business advice from us.

Some choose to not be Amazon customers for various reasons...they want another stores device, or the insist on ePub or they think Amazon is evil, but the anti-monopoly types should rejoice in the fact that people can choose to utterly lock themselves out of Amazon if they want to.

[GoSharks]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

A lot of his post count comes from answering already answered questions with answers that have already been given.

This!!!!

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by ApK

Let's say that there are two ebook buyers in the whole world.

If they both buy a book from Amazon and one of them also buys from somewhere else, then Amazon have a 66% market share, but 100% percent of the customers.
In other words, even if that 48% is correct, we know many people buy from Amazon AND other places as well, so Amazon may have far more than 48% of ebook buyers as their customers. (Or there could be just one guy buying 48% of all the ebooks from Amazon.....)

And in any case, you are mistaken: Amazon will happily take anyone's money...they can read their Kindle books in the cloud viewer, or on their computer, or Android device, or iThing. Amazon will even happily take their money and give them a Kindle to read on.

Amazon will take their money, but why will people buy something they cannot use? If you only want to read on your reader, and you don't have a Kindle, then you're not going to buy from Amazon. Most people with readers aren't going to buy something they have to read on their computer or their cellphone, because otherwise what is the point of having their reader?

And as far as your initial analogy, that is still skewed. If 48% (or 1 of every two ebook reader owners) has a kindle, then the non kindle owner is not going to buy from amazon. Note that the market share is not based on ebook sales, but on reader sales. Consider reader sales figures as a maximum market size. That same study estimates that 12.8 million ereaders were sold worldwide last year, and roughly 3 million in 2009. Lets just say based on those figures that there have been a grand total of 30 million sold total (estimating for year to date in 2011, for sales in 2008 and earlier, as well as rounding to a nice workable number). Now lets add in tablet sales. One report I saw claimed that on average 1.4 ebooks were sold per tablet (still trying to find that report to link), and based on current estimates, there is 28 million iPads, 1.2 million android tablets, 134 million android phones, and 74 million iphones. Now if we assume that 100% of those are still in use, and that there is no device overlap (or at least the devices see enough usage to not effect things for this basic thought process), we add those up and get 237 million for sake of arguement, lets round to 250 million for ease and potential sales increases. Now, we have 280 million potential devices that can read ebooks. You know that if you have the hottest everyone must have ebook, you cannot sell more than 280 million copies world wide. We've established before than 48% of ereaders are Kindles, and other info suggests that 50% of ebook sales are via Amazon. A Kindle exclusive halves the potential market by half. Lets say that we're talking about the ebook marketshare, and not based on reader marketshare, and that can be skewed upward in the method you mention, the numbers still come out to that the number of potential buyers is half of what it would be if you sold the book nonexclusive. Now most of the numbers I threw up are more or less just long way around to get to my point, they still need to be taken in by authors and publishers. If you have an ebook from a top selling big name author, by making that choice to be exclusive, you're potentially cutting yourself off from making millions more than you could be. We've got that 280 million number, the 50% estimate, and lets just say that you hope to sell to 1% of the total market, and your book is selling for $10. By being amazon exclusive, your book may only have $14 million in total sales, compared to the potential $28 million. That is a huge chunk of money you could be leaving on the table, and I doubt Amazon can justify or afford to buy your exclusivity at that rate.

Originally Posted by ApK

What Amazon is discouraging, is for someone to buy a competing device (which is most likely integrated with a competing ebook store), and by all market accounts, their strategy has worked brilliantly. Again, they seriously seem to not need business advice from us.

Oh yeah, from Amazon's end it is brilliant. I am not arguing against Amazon's standpoint here. I thought the discussion was about authors and their books being Kindle exclusive.

Originally Posted by ApK

Some choose to not be Amazon customers for various reasons...they want another stores device, or the insist on ePub or they think Amazon is evil, but the anti-monopoly types should rejoice in the fact that people can choose to utterly lock themselves out of Amazon if they want to.

How does that make any sense? "Yay! Down with monopolies! I can't buy from a retailer that has their own proprietary format that will not work on anything but their own devices or software!" I mean, that sort of thing is more or less what monopolies are, when companies use their size to control what those in the market can or cannot buy from. Someone who is antiestablishmentary enough to hate monopolies, will see that as a bad thing because in a market with no monopolies or companies asserting control, the consumers would be able to buy from anyone regardless of device.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

If you only want to read on your reader, and you don't have a Kindle, then you're not going to buy from Amazon.

Big if. Doesn't take much looking around here to see that people read in various ways.

And as far as your initial analogy, that is still skewed. If 48% (or 1 of every two ebook reader owners) has a kindle, then the non kindle owner is not going to buy from amazon. Note that the market share is not based on ebook sales, but on reader sales.

I thought it was books but the logic still holds. I have a Kindle and a Sony. I contribute 50% market share of both, but I'm still a full customer of Amazon

Consider reader sales figures as a maximum market size[...]Kindle exclusive halves the potential market by half.

But it's not and it doesn't. Some people have more than one device, some people read books on things other than dedicated readers.
Reduces? Possibly. Halves? Certainly not. How many people read Kindle books on their iPod or iPad alone.

Oh yeah, from Amazon's end it is brilliant. I am not arguing against Amazon's standpoint here. I thought the discussion was about authors and their books being Kindle exclusive.

I lost track of what it was about.
But I think my argument holds true in either case.

How does that make any sense?

It doesn't. It was a shot at those who cry "monopoly" when Amazon has done nothing unfair and has only offered an overwhelmingly successful model.
I feel the same way about those who cry "boycott" if a book is over $10.

ApK

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ApK

It doesn't. It was a shot at those who cry "monopoly" when Amazon has done nothing unfair and has only offered an overwhelmingly successful model.
I feel the same way about those who cry "boycott" if a book is over $10.

ApK

When Amazon has an exclusive eBook, that is a monopoly for that eBook. That eBook may only work with Amazon's software/hardware. The author is limiting the potential number of customers. Also, the author is making a bad name to those that do not buy eBooks from Amazon.

Stripping DRM/converting has nothing to do with this.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When Amazon has an exclusive eBook, that is a monopoly for that eBook. That eBook may only work with Amazon's software/hardware. The author is limiting the potential number of customers. Also, the author is making a bad name to those that do not buy eBooks from Amazon.

Stripping DRM/converting has nothing to do with this.

No argument. You can't please everyone. Just about any action anyone takes in business will tick off some group.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ApK

No argument. You can't please everyone. Just about any action anyone takes in business will tick off some group.

But, we'd have less of an issue if all reflowable eBooks were published in both ePub and Mobipocket.

[jhyattmd]

Hi - I came to this discussion late, so this may already have been covered, but I don't agree that smashwords does a terrible job with epub. I have three books there and the epub version is fine. Maybe not as perfect as it could be if the source didn't have to get converted to all formats.

It's a lot of work figuring out how to get it right, though, but for what Smashwords offers, authors would be missing a huge market if they only publish for Kindle.

[carld]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

They don't even have the chance to be customers. A customer is someone who buys a product or service from you. In this case, by choosing to be exclusive in one format, you're refusing to accept money from anyone who doesn't use that format.

Those customers are perfectly free to buy a Kindle and purchase from Amazon's catalog. Should I be complaining that Apple, B&N and Sony are refusing to accept my money because they don't publish Kindle compatible ebooks?