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#16 |
Coffee Nut
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Karma: 298350
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Missouri
Device: Kindle 3; K4PC; Calibre
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None of the eBook readers is really limited to one vendor, nor are eBooks from a given vendor available only on that vendor's eReader. Conversion is simple enough with Calibre or other software, and DRM can be removed if you push the limits of ethics a bit for your own use. There are very few books available (for example) for non-Kindle readers that are not available on Amazon. An alternate option is to use the computer reader software on a computer to buy and read a DRM-enabled book from another vendor that doesn't work on another reader. Content has become less a factor than the media functionality.
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#17 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Karma: 70314280
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Atlanta, GA
Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2
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Quote:
If I could find an ebook store where, when I'm browsing for a new SF/F ebook, I didn't have to scroll through 10 pages of porn, self published books, and public domain books to find actual newly published SF/F ebooks then that's where I go. Amazon uses the publishers to maintain their book database because it would be expensive to try to maintain it themselves. They push the cost to someone else. Thus, you get a list that has a bunch of extra junk put in by people gaming the system. An ebook store what specialized in a specific genre could maintain such a list themselves with a degree of accuracy that a broad based store like Amazon can't afford to do. A genre specific ebook store could afford to generate author pages that include things like series info, the order of books and the like, things that I frequently don't find on Amazon author's pages. Yes, I know I can simply do a google search and find that info, but the point is convenience and flow making a more pleasant shopping experience. They would also be more likely to keep up with the genre specific news such as a particular author coming out with a new book, or passing away, or some backlist books finally making it to ebooks. Reader recommendations in a genre specific ebook store would be more likely to have better recommendations, plus you could have a community that is more in touch with what is going on in that specific genre. I use SF/F because I like SF/F, but any genre can be serviced in such a manner. |
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#18 | |||
Professional Contrarian
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Karma: 3289631
Join Date: Mar 2009
Device: Kindle 4 No Touchie
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Quote:
It is much easier to start an ebook store with 300k titles than a paper book (online) store that offers 300k titles. However, you are vastly underestimating the resources involved. You still need rock-solid web servers, secure credit-card processing, sophisticated databases to both run your website and track sales, customer service, advertising, and people to set up and run your company and system 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You are not going to have much luck running a setup like that out of your cousin's basement. I'm pretty sure you'd need at least some outside funding, most likely from VC's who are going to think you're nuts for taking on Amazon, Apple, B&N and others. Unless you have some take on things, or offer a service, that is both unique and difficult for the big companies to replicate. And again, major corporations that already have a lot of these advantages are entering the space and getting destroyed (cf Borders/Kobo). Quote:
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#19 | ||
Addict
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Karma: 112042
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Maryland, USA
Device: Sony PRS-650
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Quote:
Googling reveals Amazon.com's (AMZN) capitalization at about $82 billion. One ten-thousandth would be over $8 million dollars. Would that get me a rock-solid web server, databases, automated order-fulfilment, etc. and keep me going with a handful of employees (no need for shipping or receiving!) plus advertising (no need for a warehouse!) until I became profitable? I'm not even very interested in the answer because it's an unfair question. An ebook-only store doesn't have to invest in stock (books) or support thereof, whereas a large part of Amazon's investment must surely be stock (books and other products) and the means to warehouse and ship. Quote:
That is, I had been only considering a graph of sales vs individual book titles. But you made me wonder what it would look like if we graphed sales vs publishing companies, since I am guessing I could get an agreement per publisher instead of per book. There has been some interesting feedback in this thread, though I'm loosing interest in pursuing it. The key point hasn't changed. Amazon's ability to stock very low-volume books due to their overall huge volume (the long tail of the sales vs individual book graph) is taken to it's extreme with ebooks, which require no stock at all regardless of their sales volume. And I further contend that this opens a new door for competition because the new long tail should be exploitable by much smaller companies. Last edited by KenJackson; 12-26-2010 at 12:01 AM. |
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#20 |
Junior Member
![]() Posts: 8
Karma: 10
Join Date: Dec 2010
Device: kindle
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I think you are correct that ebooks might solve the backend challenge of opening your own bookstore (stocking enough inventory to be interesting when someone comes to shop). However, I don't know that they do a whole lot to solve the perennial front end challenge - getting people to show up to shop.
Offering a wide inventory isn't interesting any more, or even notable. Amazon and several others have price match policies, so if you start pulling in any traffic at all, I don't think you're going to get to keep a lower price on record. It will be hard to compete with the "click and its on your Kindle" functionality of Amazon, so you'll be competing for the ebook consumers savvy enough to use Calibre or at least knowledgeable enough to load a downloaded file onto their ereader. I think this hypothetical gets a lot more interesting if you have an interesting take on the question of how to acquire customers. |
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Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
New to Kindle...privacy implications | coleman | Amazon Kindle | 32 | 01-03-2010 04:09 PM |
Should Calibre take a long time to add a directory full of ebooks? | jusmee | Calibre | 4 | 10-25-2009 10:34 PM |
Ebooks deleted after so long? | emonti8384 | Sony Reader | 6 | 10-23-2009 01:52 PM |
How long has Amazon been trolling for ebooks? | RalphTrickey | Amazon Kindle | 8 | 06-11-2009 08:12 PM |
Long-term implications of Sony Reader details | Ken Stuart | Sony Reader | 8 | 09-26-2006 03:09 PM |