Amazon’s Book Monopoly : A Threat to Freedom of Expression?

[darryl]

A little dose of reality for those who perhaps have not given this much thought. It is no accident that Amazon is in the position it is. Amazon has shown amazing foresight. Amazon has planned long-term, and for the most part the market has behaved as expected or better, and where it has not Amazon has adjusted. And Amazon has invested. All of the years it was mocked for not returning a dividend to its investors. All of the years it was mocked for not making a profit, though it seems now that it was investing every cent that might have been profit back into the business. Building an infrastructure. Distribution centres. Expanding according to its plans.

Although I am a big fan of Amazon, I too would like to see at least a close second. But lets face it. Apple and Google, as big and profitable as they are, are years behind Amazon in infrastructure and technology. They would need to spend substantial sums and time to challenge Amazon. And most assuredly Amazon would not be standing still during that time. And why would either Google or Apple want to do this. Already Apple did not want to enter the EBook market if it had to compete on price with Amazon, and so facilitated the agency price-fixing cartel. For the moment, Amazon does not threaten either company, though who can say in the longer term?

KKR in her blog post at http://kriswrites.com/2016/01/20/bus...usiness-model/ predicts that Amazon will be on top for many years but not forever. As she puts it, 20 years ago B & N was the "Big Kahuna". Personally I think any threat to Amazon will come not from the corporate giants I referred to earlier, but from some new innovation that it fails to react to in time. I don't know that even Amazon can overcome the so-called "Innovator's Dilemna".

[Conan46]

darryl, I don't disagree with anything you said. I do think Amazon is not even beginning to slow down. They listen to their customers, that is where there innovation comes from, and as long as they continue to listen they will be unstoppable. Years ago when Roku changed the interface and put a huge ad on the channel home page I realized as a cord cutter I was pretty much at the mercy of Roku as one of the few streaming devices. I contacted Amazon and told them it would be awesome if Amazon had a streaming device that I could watch all their content on. A year or so later there was such a device. I'm sure they had already planned for it, probably others had asked for it. No one can claim Amazon does not listen to their customers--who else can we say that about? And that is why they are unstoppable.

[Conan46]

Another thing with books is that Amazon has the stats from sales to know at what price ebooks/books sell well. They tried to tell publishers this, but publishers balked. That is why we now have "Amazon the book publisher" and why they have their own lending library. Sometimes I'm not sure if the situation exists because Amazon is so smart, or all these other businesses are so very stupid.

[darryl]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Another thing with books is that Amazon has the stats from sales to know at what price ebooks/books sell well. They tried to tell publishers this, but publishers balked. That is why we now have "Amazon the book publisher" and why they have their own lending library. Sometimes I'm not sure if the situation exists because Amazon is so smart, or all these other businesses are so very stupid.

Both of your last posts are spot-on. And I think it is a combination of both Amazon doing things right and other businesses doing things stupidly. Amazon apparently introduced KDP at the same time as the Kindle. We'll probably never know for sure, but I suspect that by that stage and probably before Amazon had realised what they were dealing with in the Big 5, and that they would have to move to secure their own independent supply of books. The Big 5 faced the classic innovator's dilemna. The only way they could have won in the longer term was to disrupt their own very satisfactory business model. In effect compete against themselves. Instead they chose to try to protect that model at all costs, following the position adopted by virtually all businesses faced with the same problem in the past. Businesses that mostly ceased to exist long ago.

Amazon may well continue to dominate for a long long time if it continues its present culture and its competitors continue to act so stupidly,

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by darryl

...
Amazon may well continue to dominate for a long long time if it continues its present culture and its competitors continue to act so stupidly,

I know the narrative is Amazon is super perfect and their competitors are super stupid, but neither is really true. Amazon found a niche that was not being filled (the one stop online market place) and filled it. Like many companies that found that niche (Microsoft, Apple, Wal-Mart come to mind), once the brand name is in the public's mind, it's going to be difficult to overtake them in that niche. But Amazon does indeed have their blind spots, just like Microsoft, Apple and Wal-Mart and they have made their mistakes.

One thing to keep in mind in this forum is that setting up an online bookstore is a whole lot easier than setting up a complete online market place. Anyone who gets into the online bookstore market basically has three hurdles.

First, they need the store front. In my personal opinion, this is where Amazon is most vulnerable. A store front that solves or at least better enables discover-ability can bring a lot of people in. A store front that is a me too store front, a la Kobo, probably won't get much traction. During the word processor wars in the 90's, it was said that you have to improve someone's experience by an order of magnitude to get people to change. I think that is true is the ebook store front business as well.

Second, they need the contracts with the multitude of publishers and copyright holders. To a great extent, this is the primary issue. Building up the inventory such that they all the books that people actually want to buy. I suspect that they would need all the major publishers and authors plus the backlist to be viable. They would need to solve this before they even think about tackling the indies.

Third, they need to solve the device problem, i.e. do they want to worry about devices that are locked into a specific store (i.e. kindle and nook). Is having good reading app that allows people to buy and download books good enough or do they need to enable people to read ebooks they already own? For that matter, do they need to provide a unique reading device a la the kindle and nook? The key is making it easy to buy and read. My guess is that a good app on the top tablets will be enough to get your foot in the door and probably should be the focus. But once again, you have to solve the buy and read issue.

Neither Apple's iPhone nor Google's android were the very first smart phones. They were just the first smart phones that merged the phone and personal assistant well enough and in a flexible enough package to allow the customers to take them in unexpected directions. If the jailbreak community hadn't convinced Jobs to open up the iPhone to developers, it probably wouldn't have taken off like it did.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Conan46

They listen to their customers, that is where there innovation comes from, and as long as they continue to listen they will be unstoppable.

There are signs they are listening less. Consider the Kindle software and its viewing options. It's lagged behind Kobo for some years now. Many people have complained about few font choices. There are no bold font options. The much vaunted Bookerly was a disappointment and criticized for being too light. Amazon have done nothing to correct it.

Then of course Amazon, despite its dominant market position, shows zero interest in releasing an e-reader that is not 6". Really, Amazon is barely innovating in e-ink, if at all.

Signs of disconnect, perhaps.

Meanwhile Mr Bezos is playing with rockets. Like John Carmack and Id software and the forever reducing feature-set in his games. Who plays Id games now?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

First, they need the store front. In my personal opinion, this is where Amazon is most vulnerable. A store front that solves or at least better enables discover-ability can bring a lot of people in. A store front that is a me too store front, a la Kobo, probably won't get much traction.

Amazon's store interface is enormously better than Kobo's, to my mind. That's one of the reasons that I buy most of my books from Amazon, despite Kobo offering coupons, etc. I find it extremely difficult to find anything in the Kobo store.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Amazon’s Book Monopoly : A Threat to Freedom of Expression?
https://www.newamerica.org/open-mark...book-monopoly/



Authors United to Host Amazon Discussion
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/b...iscussion.html

What is WRONG with these people!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Whatever Amazon is, We The People are the ones that made them what they are. That is the freedom of a free market. If someone else comes out with a better option than Amazon, we would probably promptly switch over to them.

Until then, the miserable whiners can go pound sand.

And besides Blue Origin just Launched and landed the same spaceship for the second time!

http://www.ibtimes.com/blue-origin-j...rocket-2277473

(well, it's as relevant as citizens united....oh....authors united.....)

[fjtorres]

People keep talking about all the "great" added features that Kobo offers yet those "great" features don't seem to be helping them move the needle in market presence.

Could it be that those amazing features are akin to the number of cup holders in a minivan? Something that looks impressive on the specsheet and will be useful to a handful of outliers but hardly a must-have for the vast majority of buyers, who are more interested in the vehicle's reliability, fuel consumption, quality of dealer network, etc.

Different companies have different design criteria generally based on the profile of their target customer. Amazon quite obviously is targeting the mainstream fiction ebook reader rather than specialty markets in education (tried it with KDX and thudded badly) or hobbyists impressed with extensive feature sets. Instead, they focus on stability and reliability and on the backend infrastructure. Kindles are, and always have been, primarily storefronts for their ebookstore.
Judging by the results, their customers approve.
Those that don't can and do go elsewhere.

Sounds like an open marketplace to me.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kennyc

And besides Blue Origin just Launched and landed the same spaceship for the second time!

http://www.ibtimes.com/blue-origin-j...rocket-2277473

(well, it's as relevant as citizens united....oh....authors united.....)

Oh, it's much more relevant.

Those guys identified a need in a profitable market and they developed an approach to address that need. And, most importantly, they are proving their effectiveness. They just received an Air Force contract to deliver product (rocket engines) that will free a segment of the market (Air Force satellite launches) from foreign domination (russian engines).

A whole lot like what Kindle and Indies are doing.
(If you squint just a bit.)

(Also, its fun to watch the slings fly between Bezos and Musk. Shades of Tesla v Edison!)

[fjtorres]

Kindle's competitors may not be literally stupid but they are unquestionably ineffective. And their continued ineffectiveness despite the clear nature of Kindle's competitive advantages speaks volumes about their priorities, just as the tradpub establishment's Big Lie propaganda campaign holding their lynching party "event" in Washington DC speaks to the real target of their whine-fest. It's not as if they haven't made it clear that what they want is for politicians to give them European-style protection from open competition.

Considering how affordable the typical Congressional Representative is, it is also clear from their choice of this public stunt campaign instead of quietly buying the votes like every other competent lobbying group that they no more understand American political culture than they understand American consumer culture. They are asking politicians to give them special benefits that run counter to the interests of vast swaths of the voting public (some 40-80M of them, most of them of voting age, literate, and very politically aware) and the only way a politician does that is if they see an offsetting benefit under the table. And in today's populist political environment few politicians are going to fall on their swords for a bunch of whiny authors and their foreign paymasters crying "monopoly".

Not without seeing a few suitcases packed full of unmarked small denomination bills.

Until somebody in Washington, anybody, dares to stand up and offers up a french-style anti-Amazon bill all the AU gang is doing is meaningless. Self-important posturing by a bunch of entitled whiners.

The whole event is, as somebody famous once said; "...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

[darryl]

I wonder if Amazon is as competent at lobbying as they seem to be at everything else they do. Also, I doubt the connection with the Washington Post will do any harm either.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by darryl

I wonder if Amazon is as competent at lobbying as they seem to be at everything else they do. Also, I doubt the connection with the Washington Post will do any harm either.

So far he seems to be getting good press from it:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0d8cc1098aefc

More, being based in Seattle he is doubtlessly aware of the price Microsoft paid for *not* having a lobbying machine in place, 20 years ago. Microsoft now has one of the biggest, best... greased... lobbying operations in DC. Nobody hears of it because that is how corporate lobbying is supposed to be: discrete, gentile, out of sight of the masses who are now more than ever ready to lynch anybody associated with ripping off the masses.

Amazon? Best guess is they have one of the better lobbying groups: look at how they killed the internet sales tax movement. They announced their support for a single, uniform tax for the entire country, at the federal level, and got a slew of Senators (not as cheap to buy as Congressmen and some even have a shred of conscience--just a shred, but still...) to support their proposal, safe in the knowledge it would never fly but it preempted all the state level efforts. When was the last time any big US retailer whined about Amazon not collecting sales tax? 2014? 2013?

Again, no politician wants to be seen supporting giant multinationals in their effort to raise prices on consumers. (NY's Schumer quickly kneejerked in favor of the Manhattan Mafia when the DOJ filed their antitrust case but quickly ran back under his rock when the evidence of price hikes was presented.)

At most, these regular stunts by the gold-plated gang might serve as cover for some politician in a safe seat to make an ominous speech or two but as long as Amazon doesn't do anything seriously stupid (and fails to delete emails) this whole zombie meme isn't going any further than the usual tradpub apologist circles.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Amazon's store interface is enormously better than Kobo's, to my mind. That's one of the reasons that I buy most of my books from Amazon, despite Kobo offering coupons, etc. I find it extremely difficult to find anything in the Kobo store.

I don't disagree with you. My experiences using Kobo had been uniformly unsatisfying.