All entries for Sunday 31 January 2010

January 31, 2010

More Amazonian Clout!

Follow-up to Amazonian Clout from George Ttoouli, Warwick Writing Programme

Just spotted this article via Alvin Pang:

Books published by Macmillan mysteriously poofed from Amazon yesterday. The reason, according to the NYT, is that Amazon is punishing the publisher for arguing that the price of Kindle books should go up to $15. This won't end well.

Get your war on, anyone? This is going to play out badly over the next few months.

Unless all the major ebook publishers form an alliance to remove their content from Amazon's Kindle line, Amazon maintains its stranglehold on the ebook market. They won't do that, because the fewer competitors delivering Kindle content, the more monopoly a publisher will have over Amazon's ebook retail. Macmillan's departure is a boon to Random House et al, who are still tapping that vein.

And meanwhile, iBooks sound like a joke - without the no-light technology of e-readers like Kindle, what's the point in burning your eyes out on an iPad, or any other Apple screen-based product, when you could use audio book formats instead?

I still maintain that the excuse given by book retailers - that 'readers win' when books are cheaper - is a short-term view doing harm to the industry as a whole. The cancer spreads.

George Ttoouli : 31 Jan 2010 12:00 | Tags: Amazon Apple Crisis Ibooks Publishing | Comments (0) | Close comments | Report a problem