Kindle and the Publisher War
I love my Kindle. I love my eReader. It's truly an awesome device.
I do not love having to wait for new releases because publishers think if they make me wait, I'll buy the hardback version. Not so much. What's more likely to happen, is I'll forget the book is out, and won't buy it at all.
This article from Huff Po explains some of what is going on. Apple forced Amazon's hand and made them accept the same terms that Apple is offering to publishers; which is mostly that publishers can charge what they want and Amazon gets a percentage. Rather than Amazon says book are this price, list them at that price, and take your royalties out of that. Amazon was losing money on the deal, but writing it off as they subsidize sales of books with sales of devices. Or something.
As the model continues to change, as publishers become more and more obsolete has authors can get their work into the hands of readers directly, I wonder what the dinasaur publishers are going to do.
Digital media is not going away. Printed media is going away. Do you think my kid is ever going to have a newspaper subscription? I doubt he'll ever see a newspaper except on line. He's never going to buy a CD. He probably won't buy a DVD. He'll download everything from some webstore and put it on a media player device that has 4 terabytes of space. Which he'll fill in a year.
That's a ton of space, BTW. A ton. Companies my husband works with deal in 4 terabytes. That's an amazing amount of data.
The point is, like the music industry, publishers need to get with the times. They need to embrace the change, change the model and GET WITH IT. And people get so angry with Apple and iTunes and how they control the market. That happens because of no competition. By giving Apple the ability to set the prices for eBooks, publishers have handed control of the market over to that one source. With Kindle and Amazon, one would hope there would be some competition that would allow for a deal for consumers. We'll see how it shakes out.
I do not love having to wait for new releases because publishers think if they make me wait, I'll buy the hardback version. Not so much. What's more likely to happen, is I'll forget the book is out, and won't buy it at all.
This article from Huff Po explains some of what is going on. Apple forced Amazon's hand and made them accept the same terms that Apple is offering to publishers; which is mostly that publishers can charge what they want and Amazon gets a percentage. Rather than Amazon says book are this price, list them at that price, and take your royalties out of that. Amazon was losing money on the deal, but writing it off as they subsidize sales of books with sales of devices. Or something.
As the model continues to change, as publishers become more and more obsolete has authors can get their work into the hands of readers directly, I wonder what the dinasaur publishers are going to do.
Digital media is not going away. Printed media is going away. Do you think my kid is ever going to have a newspaper subscription? I doubt he'll ever see a newspaper except on line. He's never going to buy a CD. He probably won't buy a DVD. He'll download everything from some webstore and put it on a media player device that has 4 terabytes of space. Which he'll fill in a year.
That's a ton of space, BTW. A ton. Companies my husband works with deal in 4 terabytes. That's an amazing amount of data.
The point is, like the music industry, publishers need to get with the times. They need to embrace the change, change the model and GET WITH IT. And people get so angry with Apple and iTunes and how they control the market. That happens because of no competition. By giving Apple the ability to set the prices for eBooks, publishers have handed control of the market over to that one source. With Kindle and Amazon, one would hope there would be some competition that would allow for a deal for consumers. We'll see how it shakes out.
Comments