Friday, April 24, 2009

What was once ...

... and what's to come (cont'd.): The Future of Book Coverage, Part III: The Kindle Land Grab. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I should linked to this other day, when Dave sent it to me, but didn't get around to it. I link to it because, oddly enough, I think it has some bearing on this discussion: PBS Launches New Online Video Channel.
Soon, I won't have to turn on my TV to watch what's on. I'll be able see it right here on my desktop - or on my laptop. The process of change regarding media and information is far from over. I suspect that those who end up making money in spite of or because of the changes that are taking place will do so because they have simply pursued an interest for its own sake and hit upon a quality product people can't get from another source and are willing to pay for. If everybody can make wine, but one guy and one guy only can make a particularly fine vintage, that guy is going to be able to charge. And people will buy. Amazon is making great strides toward controlling the book market - and other markets. But such control, it seems to me, contains within it an inherent instability. If Amazon charges more than people are willing to pay or imposes restraints people do not like, someone will come along and challenge Amazon and the challenge will pay off. In the book field, I'd keep my eye on ABE.

3 comments:

  1. Amazon is way ahead of you on this one: they acquired ABEBooks back in December.

    If Amazon can't sufficiently improve the Kindle to make it useful for more than just recreational reading--for example, if it can't easily handle massive piles of un-reformatted PDFs some of us would love to be able to carry around in a small e-reader--then someone else is going to snag that market. I'm keeping an eye on the forthcoming Plastic Logic Reader, which may turn out to be much more powerful and more versatile than the Kindle.

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  2. I didn't know that. Another example of my capacity to prophesy backwards.

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  3. Anonymous5:16 AM

    Or simply fading memory! I had carried that ABE/Amazon story on my blog when it happened, but had completely forgotten about it when I read the post. Jeff's comment reminded me.

    But I stopped by to say, yes - the content producers (publishers of books, TV and radio progs etc) are still producing content at pretty much the same expense to themselves (as constant upgrades to new content-producing technologies, maintaining websites etc does not come cheap) - but they have lost control of the distribution - as copying of all kinds is rife all over the internet. So they can't recoup their costs.....to my mind what is bound to suffer is the quality of the initial content, as none of the "copiers" will want to (or be able to) make that investment.

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