Conspiracy Theory: What is Amazon hiding about the Kindle?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Alisa

My not-very-educated guess on the reason for this is that they want to move people into the periodical content and Whispernet is pretty key for that.

I, myself, am surprised that they have not done more promotion of periodic content, pushing that over the books. I also believe periodic content will be the big seller of the future, regular subscription plans that get you regular content is what they call a "steady revenue stream."

The amount of periodic content is still small, though. If Amazon can get a major portion of the big newspapers online, that'll be a big moment.

[Alisa]

Yep. I think they're at the foot-in-th-door phase right now. The big jump in periodicals will come when cheap color screens are available. More folks are interested in People than the New York Times.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I also question the sensibility of limiting your e-book catalog to one dedicated reader. But Amazon may simply hope to wear everyone down, until only they (and their Kindle system) are left.

That will be a cold day in hell.

[Halk]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That will be a cold day in hell.

It could happen... it depends who caves in first and releases a firmware which will run a competitors DRM.

As I understand it...

Sony DRM
Mobipocket (Cybook and Iliad?) DRM
Amazon DRM
Adobe PDF DRM (No readers)
Apple DRM (Who knows)
AN Others DRM

In 5 years time I wouldn't expect them all to be there. And since it's just a firmware update and any reader can use any DRM then perhaps we'll start to see it happening. On the other hand, it's not like DVDs where there's a cost involved in producing different formats, once you have the eBook formatted etc it's just a 5 minute operation to wrap it up in DRM. So there's less of an urgency to reduce the different flavours of DRM out there other than marketing for the devices.

[kovidgoyal]

On the other hand, it could happen that there will be no DRM whether Amazon or SONY or Adobe. Already for reasonably technically proficient people there is no DRM.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

On the other hand, it could happen that there will be no DRM whether Amazon or SONY or Adobe. Already for reasonably technically proficient people there is no DRM.

Or, if the reasonably technical people become really dishonest and greedy the whole business model may dry up and everybody suffers.

I recently heard that Mozart was very concerned about stolen music. He would hear his music being played by someone else the very next day after it was introduced and he got nothing for his trouble. His method of solving this problem was two fold.
1. He would keep the whole music in his head and only play from memory in a concert.
2. He would pass out numbered sheet music at the time of the performance and let musicians play cold or pass it out a couple of hours before and then have one rehearsal. He would then take up the sheet music.

The results were poorer performances for the customer and many totally missing musical pieces for the rest of us. There must be a point in there somewhere.

Dale

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Or, if the reasonably technical people become really dishonest and greedy the whole business model may dry up and everybody suffers.

I recently heard that Mozart was very concerned about stolen music. He would hear his music being played by someone else the very next day after it was introduced and he got nothing for his trouble. His method of solving this problem was two fold.
1. He would keep the whole music in his head and only play from memory in a concert.
2. He would pass out numbered sheet music at the time of the performance and let musicians play cold or pass it out a couple of hours before and then have one rehearsal. He would then take up the sheet music.

The results were poorer performances for the customer and many totally missing musical pieces for the rest of us. There must be a point in there somewhere.

Dale

Since Mozart's music was written on commission from wealthy patrons, I doubt he gave a rat's ass if someone else played his music as long as they didn't claim it was their music. Pick a better example

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Since Mozart's music was written on commission from wealthy patrons, I doubt he gave a rat's ass if someone else played his music as long as they didn't claim it was their music. Pick a better example

Well, since I didn't make it up but heard it in East Europe I can't come up with a better example.

Dale

[TheJohnNewton]

If the music and audio book industries are any indication drm seems to be on the decline. My thoughts on it are, those that want to defeat DRM can anyway, those that will be honest will be honest if DRM exists or not. In other words I don't think it's worth much. I'd rather see companies working on products and features that do something for customers.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That will be a cold day in hell.

All I can say is, they used to say that about the day Amazon.com would be a major bookseller, competing at the same level as companies like B&N and Borders. It may be hard to believe, but that doesn't mean that isn't exactly what they're shooting for.

Sure, others will want to maintain their own formats. But we've seen ample examples of smaller fish that couldn't compete with the bigger fish and moved on.

And if Amazon manages to outperform the other e-book sellers, I don't see any reason why it can't happen. They could even give up on DRM just to win mindshare. And who's got a bigger catalog of books at their disposal?

I really don't think it's that farfetched.

[JSWolf]

Well for me, I can get the eBooks I want without DRm to get in the way. It;s nice that I can do this. And I can now purchase in multiple formats. But as long as I am willing to convert it all works fine. Converting is not that much a hassle these days.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

On the other hand, it could happen that there will be no DRM whether Amazon or SONY or Adobe. Already for reasonably technically proficient people there is no DRM.

Agreed.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

All I can say is, they used to say that about the day Amazon.com would be a major bookseller, competing at the same level as companies like B&N and Borders. It may be hard to believe, but that doesn't mean that isn't exactly what they're shooting for.

Sure, others will want to maintain their own formats. But we've seen ample examples of smaller fish that couldn't compete with the bigger fish and moved on.

And if Amazon manages to outperform the other e-book sellers, I don't see any reason why it can't happen. They could even give up on DRM just to win mindshare. And who's got a bigger catalog of books at their disposal?

I really don't think it's that farfetched.

I was talking about the DRM aspect, not Amazon gaining retailer dominance. I really don't care much about retailer dominance, but I do think that the nature of ebooks (their being so easy to publish and distribute) tends to make the role of middlemen like Amazon much less important and therefore the likelihood of their gaining stranglehold on the market much less likely.

[Marinerrr]

I too had a tough time tracking down a PRS-505 a little more than a week ago. After a few of my favorite online stores didn't have them in stock, I went down to two Sony stores before I could find one. They only had two in stock.

There must be some kind of shortage on parts--maybe screens (though the Sony uses a different res screen than the Kindle, so the Kindle parts shortage shouldn't be an issue for the Sony, or am I missing something).

Kind regards,
Marinerrr

[Alisa]

They use the same screen, just a different controller. If I recall correctly, it's not the resolution that's different. It's the number of grey scales.