Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Why are people accusing Amazon, Kindle of becoming Wal Mart?

In the course of just a few days there have been 2 posts talking about the power Amazon and the Kindle hold, and the impact this might have -

1. Adam Gordon at Future Savvy asks whether Amazon is becoming the Wal-Mart of the Publishing Industry?
2. RBC Capital analyst Stephen Ju thinks that Amazon could be responsible for close to a third of all US eCommerce transactions.  

These two articles are pointing at the same potential risk -

If the majority of retail purchases are made through one channel, that channel can start dictating terms to suppliers, and to customers. 

While Amazon holds some potential  to become the WalMart of the Internet in general, it’s obvious that when it comes to publishing and books Amazon is almost there.

Why is Amazon’s dominance of publishing almost unstoppable?

In the past I’ve talked about the ridiculous amount of traffic Amazon gets -

72-78.5 million people a month (from the US), and add another 46 million or so non US visitors. 

Here’s a list of publishing and books related sites and companies Amazon owns -

1. TeleBook (http://www.telebuch.de), which became Amazon.de.
2. Bookpages.co.uk, which became Amazon.co.uk.
3. Joyo.com became Amazon.cn.
4. Abebooks (used and rare books) which gets 1 million people a month.  
5. LibraryThing.com (book social network) gets 534K people a month (Amazon has a 40% stake). 
6. Audible.com (audio books) gets 453K people a month.
7. MobiPocket.com (store, software, ebook format) gets 49.3K people a month.
8. Shelfari (book social network) which gets 48.9K people a month.
9. BookSurge (book printing on demand) which gets 26.5K people a month. 
10. GoJaba (used, rare, and out of print books).
11. Amazon Digital Text Platform for self–publishing for Kindle Store. 
12. Brilliance Audio (audio-books).
13. Fillz (inventory and sales management for books, CDs, etc.)
14. BookFinder (new and used books and textbooks) which gets 315K people a month.  

Are we forgetting something?

Yes! Amazon’s trump card - Kindles + the Kindle Store.  

Add the 700K (and ever increasing) Kindles and Kindle 2s in circulation to all of Amazon’s web properties, and we’re looking at a goliath of a company that is -

1. Controlling a really huge number of book retail channels – both in the US and worldwide.
2. Moving into publishing of books.
3. Moving into textbooks.
4. Beginning to get a really good foothold into used books.
5. Leading the charge of eReaders and eBooks, and with Kindle 2/Kindle 1 creating the most powerful retail channel any company has EVER  had.

 The extent of Amazon’s dominance is such, its competitors have to band together -

1. Google and Sony are banding together to fight it.  
2. Adobe and Stanza and O’Reilly are banding together and pushing ‘open’ platforms and appealing to the greater good.

Have there been situations like this in the past, where a company’s competitors were worried enough to band together and push ‘open standards’? Yes,

1. Linux and  Open Source software taking on Microsoft. 
2. OpenSocial taking on Facebook.

We really are talking about the possibility of a Microsoft level of dominance.

What Happens when Amazon controls publishing and books?

We hope that they are a benevolent dictator. Seriously.

There are two companies that could be a threat to Amazon -

1. Google – However, it has too many other issues, and it’s too spread out.  
2. Apple – Apple is the only real threat as it has both iTunes and a potential eReader (10″ iTouch). Apple has the added benefit of a $27 billion war chest. However, Apple just might not care about publishing because it’s not cool enough.

What about Publishers?

Publishers are so busy mistreating their own customers (Author’s Guild and Text To Speech; >$9.99 Kindle book prices) they aren’t really seeing what’s unfolding. They are so caught up in preserving their inefficient, anti-lean organizations and their comfy jobs that they aren’t going to react fast enough to stop Amazon’s relentless take-over of publishing.

So – Yes! Amazon is well on its way to becoming the Wal Mart of Publishing.

Throw in the triple benefits of -

1. WhisperNet connecting Kindles to the Kindle Store.
2. The bonus that Amazon will be publishing a lot of the books they sell.
3. The fact that Kindle owners are trained  to buy books AND content that’s free on the Internet. 

And suddenly, WalMart no longer seems to be the best example of completely dominating an industry. Perhaps, WalMart should be looking to Amazon for inspiration.

Filed under: publishing Tagged: | kindle publishing