This is why Amazon is going to win

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

No, actually, I'm pretty much squarely on target. ...

Let's revisit this in about 3 years and see where things are. As I said only history will judge.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Grauheim

I picked up a couple of ebooks for my Opus the other day. When I tried to load them up, I found I'd made the dumbest of all newbie errors, and that the books were in fact PDF, not ePub. Ouch. I succeeded in "liberating" the first book, and then with a combination of Acrobat Pro, Calibre, Sigil and plain old Vim, I succeeded in turning it into a passible ePub. No luck with the second book, unfortunately.

Here's my experience-- I load a PDF on my Sony Reader. I read the PDF on my Sony Reader.

No more steps.

So far, I have yet to find a "buyable" EPUB that I haven't hated-- they have all been formatted with the smallest font still too large, lines too widely spaced, and thus too few words per page. The only EPUB I've actually bothered reading was one from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18891

For everything else, I've read TXT or RTF or PDF files. What I'd like to see is offical EPUBs not formatted like they are a primer for a 5-year-old.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by orwell2k

In the end, my sentiment is Screw you Amazon and Sony...

Don't blame Amazon and Sony for the restrictions. Blame the publishers or whoever were the ones who decided that your IP is where you are buying eBooks from and not the shop.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Don't blame Amazon and Sony for the restrictions. Blame the publishers or whoever were the ones who decided that your IP is where you are buying eBooks from and not the shop.

Yes! As far as the restrictions, that is due to law and contracts with writers and publishers.

[Liviu_5]

I think that the book - music analogies are flawed since the big money in digital music have been in selling devices and that's how Apple won; selling music was and is secondary for them, while selling iPods and iPhones is their core business with selling Mac's next

In books nobody yet showed that there are big money to be made selling ebooks; it's early times but I doubt it; will there be big money selling devices - again maybe or maybe not but again it's early times and the Kindle is good but not great so i doubt it will get the brand recognition of the iPod/iPhone and sell in the zillions

My bet is that the traditional book business is going to scale down massively the way the music business has since I just do not think the money are there in the digital world to sustain the pre-digital/physical model, while on the other hand new book offerings will go up since it will be much easier to offer them as Lulu, Smashwords and the like show

I see only a downward path for big publishers, while B&N, Borders and the other big book chains will need to reinvent themselves drastically as destinations - essentially coffee shops with things to read - to survive

Amazon is essentially a non-physical company - their tons of warehouses are peanuts as cost goes comparing with the prime locations and the rent that goes with them of BN/Borders - so I think that it will thrive selling anything they can

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think, personally, that to talk about a single "winner" is rather odd. There's pretty much no area of the market that only has a single player in it. The eBook market will probably shake down to a few big players, and a number of smaller providers with more specialist offerings, but there's really no reason at all to suppose that there will be any one single "winner".

There's absolutely no reason that someone can't launch an ePub-based Reader with an online bookstore and wireless delivery.

I think there needs to be a winner in the format war--especially if we're going to have DRM and thus can't easily change formats.

There's not really room for more than one format--just like HD-DVD died off as Blu Ray won the HD-Format war. People aren't going to want to own multiple devices. Same with MP3--even with the success of the iPod and iTunes, MP3 has more or less won out now that iTunes is DRM free and you can covert anything from AAC to MP3 within iTunes.

I think there will be multiple devices and multiple e-book stores for 100% sure going forward. But eventually they'll be selling the same format and/or non-drm'ed easily converted files so that users with any device can access their books--just like I can now buy from iTunes with no problems which I couldn't before since neither of my Creative MP3 players can play AAC files.

[fugazied]

The big players always win at these kinds of area simply because they are the only ones that the old media big players will deal with.

For example the mp3 market big players like Apple and Amazon tend to do well because they can lock in big music publishers more easily than smaller companies. In the ebook market, whoever cracks the print publishers paranoia first will profit the most.

Amazon has the marketing power in the Internet sector so have a pretty good standing with publishers and they have to work very hard to get simple things like international licensing. It doesn't mean Amazon will necessarily win, B&N also have a great relationship with print. But it be a battle between big corporations with some small niche publishers selling indie works in the margin.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by fugazied

The big players always win at these kinds of area simply because they are the only ones that the old media big players will deal with.

For example the mp3 market big players like Apple and Amazon tend to do well because they can lock in big music publishers more easily than smaller companies. In the ebook market, whoever cracks the print publishers paranoia first will profit the most.

Amazon has the marketing power in the Internet sector so have a pretty good standing with publishers and they have to work very hard to get simple things like international licensing. It doesn't mean Amazon will necessarily win, B&N also have a great relationship with print. But it be a battle between big corporations with some small niche publishers selling indie works in the margin.

Problem is, while Amazon may be large, it's on its own. All the other book sellers are switching to epub. And last I checked, Amazon didn't have a 50%+ of world-wide market share...

[orwell2k]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yes! As far as the restrictions, that is due to law and contracts with writers and publishers.

Yes, it's always someone else's fault. Sorry, but part of the blame must lie with Amazon in this case.

I have bought numerous pBooks from Amazon over the years - obviously US editions. They have never refused to take my money and send me any book I ordered. (Similarly, they have sent me any Region 1 DVD I have ordered - obviously a region restricted item, yet they send it anyway.)

Now an eBook is a different medium, but the same content as the pBook version (US spelling in the US version, etc.). Yet bizarrely, they can be region restricted. So where is the publisher/writer agreement everyone refers to when the "information" is available to me from the US as a paper copy but not as an e-copy.

And before the "apples" and "oranges" crowd jumps in, I know we're talking digital info versus other info, but publishers and distributors are happy to try and justify using a paper book pricing scheme for eBooks (e.g. new release eBook = hardcover price, etc.). So I feel somewhat justified in comparing availability of paper info and digital info of the same book.

I know it's not a prerequisite that laws and rules make sense - but this makes no sense. The digital format is being used as an excuse to attempt to control the markets (much like the ludicrous DVD and BD region coding). Fair enough if they can get away with it, but claiming they should shoulder no blame for these choices is a classic cop-out and doesn't float.

In the end, I can try to logically put forward my position on this matter as much as I like, but the bottom line is Amazon and Sony don't want me tyo buy their eBooks. So, screw Amazon and screw Sony - they will never get me as an eReading customer in the future, period.

Quite frankly, since I have been forced to look elsewhere I have found there are often better options anyway, so it's not all bad. One thing that is sadly lacking at the moment is correctly written eBooks - i.e. with UK English spelling. That's what is nice about buying UK edition pBooks, so I hope we get the equivalent choice in eBooks soon.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by orwell2k

In the end, I can try to logically put forward my position on this matter as much as I like, but the bottom line is Amazon and Sony don't want me tyo buy their eBooks. So, screw Amazon and screw Sony - they will never get me as an eReading customer in the future, period.

It's not that they don't WANT you to buy their books, but that their publishing contracts do not PERMIT them to sell you some of their books. If a publisher only has a contract to sell a book in the US, then they will be in breach of contract if they sell it to you if they sell it elsewhere. That's because, legally, the "point of sale" for a digital product is the customer's location, whereas for a physical product it's the store's location. So when you buy a paper book from Amazon US, legally it's being sold in the US, but when you buy an eBook it's being sold in the UK. Yes, it's stupid, but that's the way it is at the moment, and Sony and Amazon cannot just ignore the law.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's not that they don't WANT you to buy their books, but that their publishing contracts do not PERMIT them to sell you some of their books. If a publisher only has a contract to sell a book in the US, then they will be in breach of contract if they sell it to you if they sell it elsewhere. That's because, legally, the "point of sale" for a digital product is the customer's location, whereas for a physical product it's the store's location. Yes, it's stupid, but that's the way it is at the moment, and Sony and Amazon cannot just ignore the law.

Exactly!

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's because, legally, the "point of sale" for a digital product is the customer's location, whereas for a physical product it's the store's location.

Everyone keeps saying that, but what's the actual legal foundation for it? I think that the goods are sold by the store wherever it is hosted and delivered to the customer over the internet. That's the approach taken by the Russian ebook store litres.ru. Why is everyone else looking at it the opposite way?

[HarryT]

Presumably it's defined by the various e-commerce laws, igorsk. There has to be some good reason for it - the last thing a company like Amazon wants is not to be able to sell stuff to you.

[Bald Eagle]

Since logic doesn't enter here lets for a moment entertain the thought that they (Amazon, Sony, etc.) don't really sell their books abroad, they put them (an individual copy complete with DRM) on a server right in the middle of the US, where they are subsequently collected by the customer and imported to his home location at his own cost (i.e. downloaded through his own internet connection). Not so?

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Presumably it's defined by the various e-commerce laws, igorsk. There has to be some good reason for it - the last thing a company like Amazon wants is not to be able to sell stuff to you.

True.
Then woudn't sony, amazon and all have intrest in getting stuff to move ? And, woudn't all of them together have some weight ?