Does Amazon Want to Monopolize The Entire Publishing Chain?
from the how-much-is-enough? dept
The launch of Amazon's Kindle Fire at a price well below expectations has naturally focused people's attention on the e-book side of Amazon's operations, and the likely effect of the extended Kindle family on other publishers trying to go digital. But something else is happening at the other end of the publishing chain that could well disrupt the industry just as much, if not more: Amazon is becoming a major publisher in its own right.
Things began back in May 2009, when it launched AmazonEncore:a new program whereby Amazon uses information such as customer reviews on Amazon websites to identify exceptional, overlooked books and authors that show potential for greater sales.After this low-key start, Amazon added others imprints, including AmazonCrossing (foreign books in translation), Powered by Amazon (short books), Montlake Romance (romantic fiction), Thomas & Mercer (mysteries and thrillers) and, most recently, 47North (science fiction, fantasy and horror) - the last of these with some eye-catching authors:
47North launches with 15 books, including "The Mongoliad: Book One," the first in the ambitious, five-book, collaborative Foreworld series led by Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear. All of these books will be available to English readers in Kindle, print and audio formats at http://www.amazon.com, as well as at national and independent booksellers. 47North will publish original and previously published works, as well as out-of-print books.Meanwhile, back in May this year, Amazon hired a publishing industry veteran to become VP, Publisher of Amazon Publishing’s New York office:
Amazon.com has taken its most aggressive step yet toward competing head-on with traditional publishers: It’s hired Larry Kirshbaum, a literary agent and the former CEO of Time Warner Publishing Group (now Hachette Book Group), to start a general trade imprint.
Until now, Amazon’s imprints have focused on genre fiction like mystery and romance. By hiring a high-profile industry veteran to focus on “quality books in literary and commercial fiction, business and general nonfiction”—and by releasing those books in both print and digital formats—Amazon is announcing itself as a serious competitor against the “big six” traditional trade publishing houses.Put all these imprints together, plus Amazon's main sales sites around the world and the Kindle e-readers range, and you have a fully-integrated global publishing strategy. It's hard to see how traditional publishers can respond. They may have impressive back catalogs, and established links with leading authors, but Amazon has the distribution network and growing success in e-book publishing. Above all, the trade publishing houses seem to lack Amazon's ambition: it looks like it doesn't just want to make money from the entire publishing chain, it wants be the entire publishing chain. Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
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Filed Under: ebooks, economics, publishing
Companies: amazon
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Using latest Firefox with Adblock Plus and Noscript on Win 7 Home Premium x64, if that helps.
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however - if they published a calendar featuring scantily clad Amazon Women ......
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However, after I saw $100 worth for books for $18 (e-books format for kindle) I must admit that I drooled.
Hopefully publishers worldwide will start giving more attention to the ebook market. And God, we lack DRM free content there. Any tips on how to remove DRM from kidle e-books? It's fairly annoying if you want to use anything other than... kindle to read them.
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Great news
This is good news all around. The major publishers need new, powerful competition as their forced same price every where model has done nothing but hurt consumers.
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If Amazon can flesh out a crowdsourced rating/sample-sharing literature system, this could REALLY take off....
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Re: Great news
This move could actually make amazon the "Apple" of e-books. Which would hurt consumers if they forced authors to stick to certain price points. If they continue to allow authors to set their own prices, then it is good for consumers, and allow the free market to work.
I almost feel sorry for the big 5 publishing houses, and every book store in existance.
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Interesting
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Re: Interesting
Can you explain please? In my view, it seems that Amazon is forcing others to compete in the marketplace and introduce more efficient models of business than currently presented.
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In the west, however, we've generally, (though not always), favoured horizontal expansion - buying out direct competitors - and it's THIS that leads to monopolies, and causes problems.
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They were all vertical monopolies broken up (with the exception of Carnegie Steel, which, I believe, despite its size and power, was never targeted) by the U.S. Justice Dept.
Unless I'm mistaken all the big trusts broken up by the Justice Dept. in the 20th century were vertical monopolies and not horizontal ones ...
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I have wondered why this hasnt happend sooner
It would be worse for the consumer is some ways as you would have to scan multiple sites for movies, music and books, but it might work.
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Re: I have wondered why this hasnt happend sooner
That wasn't in the job description.
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Re: I have wondered why this hasnt happend sooner
FTFY
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I could be mistaken, but I think you have that backwards - what Amazon's doing is vertical integration, right?
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Re: I have wondered why this hasnt happend sooner
In other words, they don't want to take the risk for fear of losing their jobs. Amazon has nothing to lose.
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Re: I have wondered why this hasnt happend sooner
"Why haven't record labels, movie studios and book publishers done this before?"
"This would allow prices to go lower since the retail markup could be done away with while still giving the labels their full cut."
The labels, studios and publishers have no concept of how to lower prices to increase income. It is a totally foreign idea to them and makes their head hurt if someone tries to explain it to them. Remember when cassettes went out because CDs were so much cheaper to make? Despite the lower costs the price of music instead went up! The content industries are about 5-6 years behind the economic times and they seem oblivious to the plight of middle class America - their core audience. Professional sports are even further disconnected from today's economic reality. Going to a baseball, football, basketball or hockey game now costs as much or more than going to a big name amusement park.
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And manufacturing price had nothing to do with it - everybody recognizes that the money goes to the people that made, recorded, and distributed the music - not the piece of plastic it's recorded on.
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Odd, that's not what the label said at the time. I remember, I was there. They overtly promised that because of dramatically reduced costs associated with producing CDs vs cassettes & vinyl, the consumer would see a healthy reduction in the list prices for them after an initial period of inflated prices intended to offset their costs of setting up the new manufacturing infrastructure.
The math works. Tapes & LPs cost a lot to make, and even more to ship (they're both relatively bulky and heavy). I forget the exact number, but if memory serves then manufacturing & shipping accounted for somewhere around 1/3 of the wholesale price. CDs are so much cheaper as to be effectively free.
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Re: I have wondered why this hasnt happend sooner
Nobody wants to buy Sony music from the Sony site (or, worse yet, Arcade Fire music from the Arcade Fire site), DreamWorks movies from the DreamWorks site, Random House fiction from the Random House site, etcetera -- if there's one place to go to find it all. And that, if you haven't noticed, is what Amazon wants to be: the one place to go to find it all, from used PC monitors to shoes to lawn mowers to, yes, books they publish themselves (and, as you note, cut out the middle man).
BTW: several publishers have joined forces to create their own bookseller site (bookish.com), but they're having trouble getting it off the ground. About which no one should be surprised.
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yes..
duh.
it's a corporation. the ultimate goal of any corporation is monopoly control of every stage of production possible, for every product possible.
(well, i say 'goal', but that implies that there's someone who has sufficient capabilities to actually think it through like that. more like they have lots of lesser goals that have that consequence.)
*ponders* a cartel is a single entity controlling the entire production chain making it impossible for competitors to exist who cannot also create an entire production chain from scratch, no? (assuming i'm not misremembering the definition.)
it makes good sense from the point of view of maximising profits, which is the only thing corporations generally care about (due to the people running them being responsible only to share holders who, as a rule, have no interests beyond short term profits due to the nonsense that is the share-market.)
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*ponders* a cartel is a single entity controlling the entire production chain making it impossible for competitors to exist who cannot also create an entire production chain from scratch, no? (assuming i'm not misremembering the definition.)
A cartel is a group, and I think it's generally considered to have a horizontal monopoly or near monopoly, not necessarily a monopoly over the whole product chain. OPEC, for example. They control a big chunk of oil production, but not refineries.
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Oh sorry, facilitators.
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Oh sorry, facilitators.
Actually, both. Because as has been established, middlemen are GOOD when they focus on FACILITATING instead of RESTRICTING.
Is everyone clear on that now? Can we move on?
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Nope, not til Monday. It ain't called troll-word-of-the-week for nothin', Marcus....
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Son of a bitch, where the hell do you get your bullshit nonsense premises? There's no designation of middlemen being evil here. None. At all. Value-adding middlemen are GOOD for the marketplace. Hell, I work for one. We're called a VAR, value added reseller, and for small businesses it makes a TON of sense to work with us. Amazon is no different.
I swear to christ, there HAS to be a better trolling option than just beating your own strawman to death....
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Actually, I am beating Mike's strawman to death. You just aren't catching it yet.
Do you like his middleman project, Step2 (which is likely to change names, considering that Step2 has been trademarked for a long time including online).
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Step2 - Deliver you the message from the woman under the bridge, "Your mother wants you to come home for dinner"
Step3 - Walk away grinning ...
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Step 2: Remind the shout down crew of that basic fact, and
Step 3: Shake head and wonder if it would take dynamite to move them from their positions.
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domain trademarked, products trademarked, etc.
I would say they might have a reasonable case if there starts to be confusion in search engines regarding "step2".
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A strawman is a dummy target... So I suppose you're admitting that you aren't responding to any real, meaningful points? How good of you.
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Honestly, I have no idea what you are talking about and at this point I'm fairly certain you don't either.
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Hmm
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Frankly, I am surprised that Amazon is still pursuing those type of arrangements. They have reached such a dominant position in the e-publishing market that they really don't need exclusivity deals that lock out competition. Exclusivity arrangements are going to have no real effect other than drawing the eyes of FTC monopoly cops.
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Another leg up
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Re: Another leg up
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