"If minimum wage goes up, the price of everything goes up."

[SuburbanFarmer]

Bezos had no reason *not* to be overconfident. His Kindle Fire damn near unseated the iPad for #1 selling tablet back when the iPad looked unassailable. Then he whooped Apple's ass in a lawsuit over eBooks. Then he gobbled up all sorts of their eBook and digital music market share. Amazon's track record against Apple ain't half bad.

He misjudged what he was competing with. Online books are a far cry from cellphones. Maybe he was looking at it as a brand competition, when it wasn't.

[Fife]

Yes, Bezos missed the mark. Online books are mostly only for people who can actually read. Slick phones are especially good for everyone else.

[Speaker to Animals]

Bezos was sabotaged by the publishing industry. In most cases, the e-book costs as much as the print version. In some case, the e-book costs more than the print version.

The only way Kindle can really take off is for the kindle version of books to come down dramatically.

Publishers do NOT want to transition to electronic books for various reasons, so they do whatever they can to keep that day in the future.


Personally, I prefer the physical book for nonfiction. For SF novels, the kindle is pretty nice. I don't need to be able to flip through it, search for something that was said in the past, etc.

[Fife]

I still prefer a dead-tree book for most things myself. One thing that the kindle is absolutely fantastic for is downloading samples. I sometimes go through 5-10 samples to find something I really want to invest the time into; and even though e-book format is terrible for something with lots of technical language, formulas, images, &c., the sample will clue you in on whether the book as whole is worth spending the time and money on.

[Okeefenokee]

https://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fanta ... B002V1OF70

[DBTrek]

If only Jeff Bezos could have the awesome predictive powers of hindsight possessed by the MHF members.
Then he might succeed.

[SuburbanFarmer]

If only Jeff Bezos could have the awesome predictive powers of hindsight possessed by the MHF members.
Then he might succeed.

Meh. I knew it was a disaster before it hit the market. The specs were terrible, and the OS was barely functional. It had a fraction of the features of iPhone, for nearly the same price. It was never going to work.

[DBTrek]

GCF, the Oracle of hindsight.

[Speaker to Animals]

I think his idea was solid. The problem was that the publishing industry killed it by driving up the costs of e-books.

But I think the long game, at least with respect to pulp fiction, Bezos has the winning side. The kindle market basically makes the publishing industry obsolete. People can publish their own works without going through a gatekeeper. The only thing he is missing is some formal means to select from the vast ocean of utter rubbish the works worth buying.

[SuburbanFarmer]

I think his idea was solid. The problem was that the publishing industry killed it by driving up the costs of e-books.

But I think the long game, at least with respect to pulp fiction, Bezos has the winning side. The kindle market basically makes the publishing industry obsolete. People can publish their own works without going through a gatekeeper. The only thing he is missing is some formal means to select from the vast ocean of utter rubbish the works worth buying.

So... becoming a gatekeeper?