Personanondata

Bezos Doesn't Like Google's Book Settlement Either

"Since the majority of book actually fall under this category"

I (and a few others) would be very interested to hear more about your analysis on this point; just how did you come up with that "fact"?

Amazon: 300,000 Kindle 2s Sold, Up to 1 Million Expected in 2009

"absolutely support that" No they don't. These are estimates based on the flimsiest of assumptions. Not only that, if these were even close to being accurate then the information would be considered material which is why AMZ has never confirmed or denied any of it.

And Louie is right. Nailed it according to who?

This Week in Saving Newspapers

David Carr's article wasn't insightful or realistic however he did touch on a key issue at the very when he said "What is under attack is the fundamental machinery of the Fourth Estate, not just the local newspapers that some love to hate and others, including many young consumers, are indifferent to."

This is an important issue I addressed the same day in more expansive detail. "Suggestions newspapers charge for content ignores deeper questions about their value proposition, the fourth estate and democracy". I suggest firstly that simply charging for content isn't enough and secondly the significant role the press can play as observers and investigators has been eroded and undermined by the misfortunes of the traditional news gathering organizations. More here:
personanondata.blogspo...
(Coincidentally I even linked to Portfolio).

How Will Apple - Amazon Partnership Change the e-Book Industry?

Julia,

Your comments are wrong or misleading on several fronts. Perhaps to gain a deeper understanding of the e-Book world you should spend sometime on the teleread.org site (or mine) but in advance of that let me address some of your simplifications.

Firstly, as 'Getmeontop' states this is hardly a partnership. Amazon is riding along on the open Apple app store. Most importantly however, they have seen the huge popularity of iPhone/Touch e-Book readers such as Stanza. By many accounts the number of eReader applications downloaded from the app store has dwarfed sales of the Kindle. Once having downloaded these readers, the book customers are not going to Amazon to buy their books. For Amazon this represents a competitive threat and they are being opportunistic and strategic in launching the Kindle reader. Secondly, while it is true a user will not have to purchase the Kindle 2, they are still going to be tied to both the Amazon store and the Kindle book format which is a non-standard proprietary format. (I might argue that Amazon is also anticipating that they can convert some of these 'Apple' customers to Kindle hardward buyers given the reader experience will not be optimized on the Apple device. Again, good business).

You also note 'the small number of Kindle owners'. Now I am happy you put it this way because there is a lot of debate in the industry about how many Kindle units have been sold. Some financial analysts put the number in the the hundreds of thousands. Many in the industry are a little more sanguine about its popularity. What is the basis of your analysis?

Everyone in the publishing industry is excited about e-Books. Many are also scared out of their brains. One reason for this is that while currently a fraction of the business, revenues are growing rapidly while over-all top line grow has stalled. What e-Books are not is incremental; they will increasingly represent replacement revenues and unfortunately the price points for e-Books are lower than print so there here is a developing issue. Not replacing dollars with dimes but nevertheless a thorny business issue that all publishers will have to deal with. And Amazon is the company driving down e-Book prices at least in comparison with print titles. (I'm not saying that's a bad thing it just is).

You branch into production issues where you loose your way entirely. In the future we will live in a world where the author delivers the book on Friday and it is published in e-Book form on Monday. In fact Public Affairs did something similar (they took two weeks) with a George Soros book last year. Today, the e-Book is delivered to the market concurrently with the print and it is unlikely to be any different for some time to come. With respect to expense, your statement 'much less expensive to distribute a digital book' is technically correct and indeed many argue on a marginal cost basis the cost is zero. That is not the same thing as saying there are no costs associated with e-Book distribution, but I don't think it is correct to draw the relationship between the cost of distribution of digital books and the potential for many more new titles. There simply isn't a cause and effect here. Personally, I am all for more books as long as they are worth reading. There are already over 250K new titles published every year in the US and I don't see the high cost of physical distribution holding that number down: It goes up every year.

Newspapers as a group don't have a hope and Amazon will have no impact. Your last comment about Kindle 'on its own couldn't have much of an impact' would take every publishing executive by surprise. Truth is the Kindle has galvanized the industry. On the plus side, the Kindle represents a giant leap forward in publishers believing in an e-Book future. On the other hand, there is intense worry because The Kindle was brought to market by their biggest customer, on a proprietary format and with complete disregard for publishers pricing policies.

Over the past six months, the landscape has changed a little with the launch of several readers on the Apple platform and the open API for the Google Book program. Each of these actions have taken some of the wind out of the Kindle sails; nevertheless, Amazon is not to be trifled with and they are not a benign player in this market. They continue to advance their interest and the non- 'partnership' with Amazon is just the most recent example of that.