What I think about the Amazon kerfluffle
Although I do not exactly have a pony in the race, except for my Prime account.
Amazon has not internalized their position as a utility. Just as you do not think about your water, or garbage, or cable company unless they are annoying you, Amazon has the potential to be that invisible, and provide us with hot and cold books and media on demand. They could be almost as invisible as that, but because they insist on winning, they become obvious, and we think about whether or not we want to find another supplier of our hot and cold running media.
Note: WHY has no one else adopted the Baen model for ebooks? Is Baen secretly losing their shirt? Because I have bought tons of Baen books, some in ARC (where I am so eager for a book that I pay $15 for the privilege of a few typos), some in the $5 version, or as part of a $15/5 book deal. And I have replicated almost all those purchases in paperback. In fact, I am sorry that more authors have not negotiated the weird deal Eric Flint made where Del Rey published the paper versions of the Rivers of War books, and Baen published the ebook versions. And they're DRM free, so I actually OWN them.
Amazon has not internalized their position as a utility. Just as you do not think about your water, or garbage, or cable company unless they are annoying you, Amazon has the potential to be that invisible, and provide us with hot and cold books and media on demand. They could be almost as invisible as that, but because they insist on winning, they become obvious, and we think about whether or not we want to find another supplier of our hot and cold running media.
Note: WHY has no one else adopted the Baen model for ebooks? Is Baen secretly losing their shirt? Because I have bought tons of Baen books, some in ARC (where I am so eager for a book that I pay $15 for the privilege of a few typos), some in the $5 version, or as part of a $15/5 book deal. And I have replicated almost all those purchases in paperback. In fact, I am sorry that more authors have not negotiated the weird deal Eric Flint made where Del Rey published the paper versions of the Rivers of War books, and Baen published the ebook versions. And they're DRM free, so I actually OWN them.