What’s a bigger threat to Amazon than Google? WalMart.
Amazon Vs WalMart is shaping up to be a more significant story for books than eReaders this Holiday Season. Why? Because the unthinkable is happening -
Breathless by Dean Koontz and 9 other highly anticipated hardcovers are being sold for $10.
$9.99 Kindle Prices make the jump to Hardcovers courtesy WalMart.
Every Publisher’s nightmare is coming true. Wal Mart and Amazon are in a brutal price war inspired by $9.99 Kindle prices.
Wal Mart started it by announcing that 10 of the most anticipated books this holiday season would be sold for just $10. Hours later, Amazon matched it. Wal Mart promptly said that it would cut prices to $9.
Fighting Words from CEO Raul Vasquez -
If there is going to be a ‘Wal-Mart of the Web’, it is going to be Walmart.com,” said Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez in an interview. “Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site.
The ‘Wal Mart Vs Amazon price war’ Books include (all available for preorder at Amazon) -
Breathless by Dean Koontz, Sarah Palin’s Going Rouge, Stephen King’s Under The Dome, I, Alex Cross from James Patterson. Ice by Linda Howard.
The Lacuna By Barbara Kingslover. Kindred in Death by J. D. Robb. Ford County by John Grisham. First Lord’s Fury by Jim Butcher. Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton.
WalMart won’t admit the Kindle and its $9.99 bestseller price is involved. However, James Patterson points out the obvious -
“Obviously e-books have gotten this thing going,” said Mr. Patterson. “E-books are terrific and here to stay. But I think that people need to think through the repercussions….But I’m not taking sides….I’m not the endangered species here.”
Wal-Mart said it wasn’t trying to match the price of electronic books. Still, the $10 price tag coincides with the $9.99 that Amazon.com charges for its Kindle e-reader best-sellers
Amazon on its own end hasn’t exactly been sitting around -
- PC World has the scoop on Amazon introducing Same Day Shipping in New York, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Boston, Washington DC, and Seattle. Order as late as 11 am (1 pm in Seattle).
- Amazon UK has made Free Shipping standard on all purchases this holiday season in the UK.
In all the excitement about eBooks we might be missing the advent of $10 hardcovers.
Speaking of eBooks it’s still not clear to me why Google want to jump into an industry everyone else thinks is dying.
Why is Google getting into selling eBooks?
Google today blew away earning estimates by reporting profits of $1.64 billion for the latest quarter. That seems picture perfect until you look at the fact that 95%+ of that is from Search.
Until Google finds another revenue source it’s in the unenviable position of being the only Tech Giant that has to rely on one source of revenue.
For example, Apple has -
- iPods and iPod Touches.
- iTunes Music.
- iPhones.
- iPhone Apps.
- Macs.
And more.
Google has been trying out a few different areas i.e. Google Apps, Cloud Hosting, News. However, it seems that for some reason Google has decided there is enough profit in Books to focus on eBooks -
- The whole Google Books Settlement to get orphan works.
- Offering free books to eReader makers to strike up partnerships.
- Now Google Editions and actually selling ebooks.
Obviously Google see a way to steal away ebooks from Amazon, not to mention enough profit in eBooks to make it the second pillar supporting Google Inc.
Kindle Vs Google Editions – Wondering what Weapons Google will use
With Google announcing a 2010 debut of its Google Editions offering it seems the Amazon Vs Google Wars will start off with Kindle Vs Google Editions.
It’s going to be interesting to see what weapons Google uses against Amazon -
- Will it be search? That would raise a lot of questions.
- Perhaps Google Books?
- Perhaps low prices?
- Perhaps ebook prices subsidized by advertisements.
- Partnerships perhaps. B&N’s eReader uses Android, Sony is going to release the first Android notebooks. Both get a million free Google Books. They’d be natural partners for Google Editions.
- Partners from the Google Browse program. Google has already confirmed these will be part of Google Editions.
We also have all the openness concepts that Google can leverage i.e.
- Open platform.
- Open formats.
- No DRM.
DRM is going to be the really interesting one – Don’t see Publishers agreeing to it and at the same time DRM would be so unlike Google. Perhaps Google uses the Cloud in some way to convey the idea that there is no DRM.
Filed under: books Tagged: | $9.99 Hardcovers, amazon vs walmart
Search will almost certainly be a big factor in Google’s book strategy. A few years ago the search giant was having problems with link spam polluting their results. The top links from any search were often rubbish generated by spammers who understood how to game the company’s engine. At a stroke, Google solved the problem by giving Wikipedia entries a higher rating, figuring – corectly – that some sort of peer review process would raise the quality bar out of the spam swamp. (Now that they have sorted the problem, Wikipedia has lost its priviledged position).
By including millions of books – which have undergone the most stringent of tests in the old publishing world – the quality of their search results will rocket again. Controlled by Google, it will be hard for any company to match them. Threats from the likes of Bing will be newtered unless they follow Google’s lead.
I agree with your conclusions. By embracing books, Google has pulled a masterstroke that forks to many new roads. The battle is just beginning.