6 ms·

This made me think that we can expect to see ebook wars like we are currently witnessing with other media, e.g. iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu. If, say, three

This made me think that we can expect to see ebook wars like we are currently witnessing with other media, e.g. iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu. If, say, three of the big six publishers end up creating their own marketplaces with their own formats and DRM, and possibly even their own devices, while pulling their ebook titles from Amazon and B&N, I can't help but think it will be a net loss for customers and of dubious advantage to the publishers. I wonder if Amazon's dominance would make this too little, too late. Something tells me there's still room to maneuver, but perhaps not for long.

jerf 15y ago
As I've said in other contexts, I simply will not purchase a subscription to each of ABC, NBC, CBS, Discovery, HBO, Showtime, etc etc and those guys can just forget that dream. Books are a bit different than those media wars, though, because they are something one buys in discrete units. If I can pop the name of the book or author into Google and land on one or another reasonably well-done website by the publisher, and they come to some sort of agreement on DRM in the manner of something like Bluray (which is to say, it is not mandatory that every company uses its own DRM and there is prior art for industry-wide agreements), it matters much less to me that I buy one book from X and another from Y. It isn't harmless, but it isn't the fatal objection I think it is for any industry with 15 different entities all trying to work out how to carve a $9.95/month subscription fee each out of me. Where I feel like video needs something like Netflix or Amazon to serve as a subscription aggregator and to manage cash flow conversion from subscriptions to per-watch fees transparently, it seems like publisher websites and Google (as a search engine, not some new service) might be sufficient for ebooks. If the book publishers get their act together. ... So never mind, I guess.

jerf 15y ago

As I've said in other contexts, I simply will not purchase a subscription to each of ABC, NBC, CBS, Discovery, HBO, Showtime, etc etc and those guys can just forget that dream. Books are a bit different than those media wars, though, because they are something one buys in discrete units. If I can pop the name of the book or author into Google and land on one or another reasonably well-done website by the publisher, and they come to some sort of agreement on DRM in the manner of something like Bluray (which is to say, it is not mandatory that every company uses its own DRM and there is prior art for industry-wide agreements), it matters much less to me that I buy one book from X and another from Y. It isn't harmless, but it isn't the fatal objection I think it is for any industry with 15 different entities all trying to work out how to carve a $9.95/month subscription fee each out of me. Where I feel like video needs something like Netflix or Amazon to serve as a subscription aggregator and to manage cash flow conversion from subscriptions to per-watch fees transparently, it seems like publisher websites and Google (as a search engine, not some new service) might be sufficient for ebooks. If the book publishers get their act together. ... So never mind, I guess.