Amazon -- eBooks, POD & Killing the Competition

If you have been paying attention, you probably figured out long ago that Amazon has a pretty simple business strategy:  to become the biggest and most complete publishing and books distribution company in the world. 

In the ideal Amazon world, an author can upload their completed manuscript to Amazon's digital content management system.  By doing so they grant Amazon the right to sell this content on demand as a physical object (hardback/paperback book)  or digital file (eBook or AudioBook).  They agree to let Amazon set price and margins in return for utilizing the biggest book distribution and marketing channel in the world.

Over the last 3 years Amazon has been very busy -- they have acquired Mobipocket for eBooks, BookSurge to print books and Audible for audio books. 

In the eBook world, they acquired Mobipocket and for months nothing happened.  Amazon continued to use Ingram's eBook service to sell eBooks in PDF, MS-Reader and Palm formats.  The Mobipocket site continued to live in it's own little world pretty much untouched by Amazon.  Same primitive website with no big changes.

Then one day in July, 2006 Amazon notified Ingram (who notified the rest of us) that  "Amazon.com has decided to discontinue its use of Ingram’s e-Book delivery services effective mid-July for new e-Book sales and the end of August for prior e-Book sales."  And poof -- the only way to buy eBooks on Amazon was to be redirected to the Mobi site. 

eBook authors and publishers were outraged and the blogosphere hummed with indignation and vague threats against Amazon.  But outrage only lasts a little while and soon authors and publishers got to work setting up their own sites, finding other eBook distributors and getting on with life.

Last week, Amazon turned it's sites on Print On Demand (POD) publishers.  These are the guys who print, bind and ship very small quantities of books.  POD is a strictly just in time system where the printing is done as needed on an order by order basis:  from one book to hundreds of books.

Very quietly they started to remove the Add to Shopping Cart Button with the See all Buying Options button on selected books.

 

Everything else is unchanged,  you sill see the cover, book information and both editorial and reader reviews.  Just no quick shipment or shipping discounts available;  you will have to find the book in the Amazon Marketplace. 

The selected books just happened to be books from a prominent POD publisher -- Publish America with over 30,000 titles listed on Amazon.  A day later Whiskey Creek Press was similarly turned off.  I suspect Lulu will be next.  

Evidently, Amazon has a new policy for writers -- if you want to publish your print on demand title and sell it directly on Amazon you must go through BookSurge. 

Predictably authors and POD publishers are outraged and the blogosphere is humming with indignation and vague threats against Amazon.  But outrage only lasts a little while and soon publishers will get to work and set up their own sites, find other distribution channels and get on with life.

Obviously, Jeff Bezos and the management team at Amazon believe that slashing and burning the competition is a viable business strategy.  In the short term they might even be right. 

Over the long term it looks less likely.  Slash and Burn techniques hurt both the general publishing/bookselling market and Amazon.  Amazon stands to loose the goodwill and cooperation of publishers, distributors, authors and a portion of the buying public.  And that will hurt over time.

History shows us that when you make enough people mad because you are a monolithic, monopolistic business eventually they fight back. The result is that the company is either weakened or seriously injured. 

The good news is that right now there are individuals and businesses out there who are highly motivated to develop new competitive strategies.  They are looking for new ideas and advantages and their focus is aimed directly at Amazon. 

del.icio.us Tags: amazon,pod,eBooks,e-books,booksurge,POD

The Expresso Machine

There is a new contraption on display in Washington DC, Alexandria, Egypt and Mid-town Manhattan. A Rube Goldberg device that hums, sputters, spits, moans and ultimately belches out a warm new book -- gives a new meaning to “hot of the press”. The contraption is the Espresso Book Machine.

It’s not pretty, but it works. Select a title and twenty minutes later you have a bound hard-copy book (complete with cover) to take with you. Click here to see a demonstration of the machine work

On Demand Books, the maker of these machines was co-founded by a former Random House Editor, Jason Epstein. He sees this machine as a solution for a single problem: the unavailable backlist. I see it as yet one more attempt to make books more accessible.

I remember sitting at Kodak headquarters in Rochester, New York about fifteen years ago and listening to one of the engineers describe a kiosk with CDs, a printer and a binding machine. The engineering drawings didn’t look a whole lot different than the current espresso machine.

The technology has changed, but the idea remains intact. Fifteen years ago CDs were an exciting step forward in redefining the book. Makes me wonder where technology will take us next.

I also find in curious that we are still stuck on the idea that a book has to be printed and have a 4 color cover. Any blogger can create more interesting and sophisticated literature in a few minutes complete with live links and interactive video. But I digress.

When you see this machine you have to wonder what this all means on a cultural and societal level. Will bookstores become ‘Kinkoish’ storefronts patronized by the very old and the most stubborn of Luddites who still require something as quaint as paper (after all, there are still those who actually still use an IBM selectric).

I am not convinced that this machine will be any more successful than the Kodak idea, but I am always intrigued by machines. . .

After the fascination with the machinery fades, however, I go back to wondering about how we will read in the future. I for one do not believe that reading will go away but that what we read and how we read it is bound to change. And more significantly, the whole idea of what a book is will change dramatically in my life time.

So, what will the book of the future look like? Will it be a dedicated electronic device like the Sony e-ink reader? Will we go back to scrolls using a version of the new OLED technology? Will the young and hip carry electronic documents on their phones and never touch paper again? Will libraries be able to replace their paper book selections in 25 years as the old ones fall apart from overuse?

I have lots of questions and no real answers. What I do know is that technology is moving faster than our understanding of how it will affect our culture. I find this both energizing and frightening – endless possibilities always are!