e-Books Game-changer vs. Publishers, Libraries and Advertisers

Amazon Building the Future and Making the Rules

The Game Changer

Amazon.com first appeared in 1995 as an online bookstore and it quickly evolved into the world’s largest online retailer. Apart from books, today the company also sells movies, music, software, electronics, food, furniture and many more things! In addition, now Amazon sells its own products and services like e-book reader Kindle, for example. With its rapid growth and unique business strategies, the company is changing the world that we know. Amazon has become the game changer of the market. Moreover, the company sets the rules of the game!

Amazon vs. Publishers

Publishers and the publishing business were the first that were challenged by Amazon. After the online bookstore decided to sell e-books for $9.99 (or even less) a couple of years ago, many publishers and writers were enraged. Why? Well, because the world which they knew was changed overnight. Publishing houses were forced to reinvent and change their business strategies in a matter of weeks. Those who couldn’t had to either quit the game or join Amazon’s league. As a result, today the company holds half the e-book market and three-quarters of the online print book market.

When Amazon.com launches its new Kindle Serials service, the position of the publishers is expected to get even worse. With Kindle Serials, Amazon will try to “rekindle” the readers’ love for episodic book publishing. And judging by the preorders for the service, hardback book publishers are already in a trouble.

Amazon vs. Libraries

Amazon’s victim number 2 is the libraries. As we already mentioned, Amazon Inc. is the biggest player in the online book industry right now. It is the main provider of e-books. Despite the fact that libraries are free, readers now prefer to buy e-books. There are two main reasons for that. First – e-books are delivered quickly. Second – they are very cheap and Amazon even offers some of them for free! As a result, libraries don’t have any other choice but to incorporate Amazon services and products into their own programs. For instance, U.S. libraries today spend 58% more on electronic resources. In addition, some of these resources are supported by Amazon. Also, most of the libraries in the States offer e-books (76%). Moreover, 39% of them provede e-readers for check-out!

So, we can say that despite being seriously challenged by Amazon, libraries still find ways to stay in the game. However, these “ways” require a lot of funding and strategic investments and not many libraries can afford that.

Amazon’s New Ad Policy

Amazon will soon release their long-anticipated tablet Kindle Fire. This week the company announced that users will now be given the opportunity to turn off the advertisements that they receive. At first look, that seems quite illogical. Amazon makes millions of dollars from advertising. Why would they give people the option to block ads? Actually this move of the company is very smooth and smart! Users will be ad-free only if they pay $15 extra. In that way, Amazon will make clients happy and they will continue to gain profit from ads. After this service is introduced, Amazon Inc. will actually make even more from advertising. Other companies will still pay them for their ads. However, now many clients will also pay them to stop the ad flow. Isn’t that simply brilliant? Amazon kills two birds with one stone!

Amazon Inc. will most probably continue to grow and develop new services in the future. What will be interesting to see is which pawn will fall next in Amazon’s game of chess!