More on Amazon, ebooks, and monopolies
For many people, Amazon is the marketplace of the future. It gives many businesses, authors, musicians, ect a platform for them to market and sell their products worldwide. This Amazing Selling Machine review indicates that more and more people are coming to Amazon to sell their products and earn a piece of the pie. What once started out as an online bookstore, now sells electronic books, or ebooks with its proprietary reading tablet, the Amazon Kindle. Though Amazon’s ebook market is huge, it doesn’t come without its downsides.
Yesterday, Brad wrote a wonderful piece blasting away at accusations that Amazon has a monopoly on the ebook. As an indie author who made most of his income via ebook sales, I thought it might be worth getting another take on the same issue. Now, it’s important to understand that being an author isn’t the easiest job in the world, so having your book distributed, whether it’s in a traditional print form or with ebook distribution, is a great feeling, especially when you can see people downloading the booking and reading it.
Brad makes excellent points, but there are some points that I figure he missed. First, let’s look at the definition of the term “monopoly“.
2. an exclusive privilege to carry on a business, traffic, or service, granted by a government.3. the exclusive possession or control of something.4. something that is the subject of such control, as a commodity or service.5. a company or group that has such control.6. the market condition that exists when there is only one seller.
[I did leave out one possible definition, but that was because it involved the board game, hence irrelevant]
So, the implication is that there is no competition in the realm of ebooks. Amazon controls the whole shebang. Now, Brad points out how myopic that thinking is in his post yesterday. » Read more