In the bid of being the victor when the dusts of ebook reader war settle, Amazon wants to make sure that victor would be it. Not only Amazon has to worry about the other ebook readers in the market, iPad is quite troublesome for the future sales of Amazon’s Kindle even though Apple’s iPad is a tablet and not specifically designed for reading ebooks. Amazon knows that people love colors and bigger reading screen, but not too big, and iPad has all of that. Kindle is only displaying texts in black and white, but Kindle is specifically designed for reading as it uses e-paper technology for its screen. E-paper screen reduces eye strain and provides longer battery life! Still, just want to make sure that Kindle could be in more hands, Amazon is testing out a program with the few selected customers who had subscribed as Amazon Prime subscribers by giving out a free Kindle.
Amazon has done itself a favor since giving out a free Kindle could be a stunt to promote Amazon Prime and Kindle in one shot! Amazon Prime customers are those who purchase products so often from Amazon that they subscribe for Amazon Prime which gives 2 free day shipping on all purchases. Amazon Prime subscription goes for $79 per year. Don’t we all hope this program could work out really well for Amazon? Since it may be a win win for Amazon Prime customers and Amazon. Amazon Prime customers who potentially buy huge amount of products from Amazon and had been doing so are well deserved of a FREE Kindle, and on the same token Amazon could now sell even more ebooks to Amazon Prime customers.
One could go further and surmise what benefits Amazon could get for it to give out a free Kindle… This goes without the need of saying as Amazon Prime customers who now have a Kindle are going to buy ebooks. Having a Kindle without an ebook to read is pretty much like not having it at all! Also, a free Kindle is a form of baiting where one family member has a Kindle, and the rest of the family have to get a Kindle too (just like how iPhone was spread). In the end, Amazon is sure to see the sales of ebooks go up as there are now more Kindle users. Source.
The stuffs that are going on behind the scene before an ebook could be placed online for sale, the whole thing is so messy and complicated that I’m not even sure that I’ve understood. So we got a product which is ebook, and it’s not the same as music, because these products carry different baggages of interests. We have seen how complicated music business is with labels’ constant lawsuits and new business models to cope with new technology such as iTune, illegal downloads through piracy, and others. You can say the book business is experiencing something like that! In music, artists have to content with labels’ dictations, but the Internet gives rise to more freedom for both well known musicians and just getting started musicians; correct me if I’m wrong, in book business, authors have to content with theirs publishers, and publishers have to content with various distributors that could sell theirs books. From publishers’ point of view, Amazon is like a giant distributor, a mega store with endless shelves to stock theirs books and ebooks, which allows publishers to sell printed books and digital books easy and fast and in profitable quantity. The problem is that when a chain of institutions that need to be wired together just to get books and ebooks to sell can create more unexpected opposing interests although the end goal is the same which to make more money from a single title.
Just recently, Amazon is wanting to take charge in dictating the prices for ebooks that Amazon is helping to sell such as digital bestsellers should only cost around $9.99 and not $14.99. On the opposing interest, Macmillan, a publisher of many great titles, wants to sell many of its ebooks at the prices that are higher than what Amazon would have listed. Amazon took action by removing all Macmillan’s titles from Amazon’s online store. Troubling authors were complaining that suddenly theirs books are no longer produce revenue from Amazon’s stream — one less stream to fish in means less money for the authors who are siding with Macmillan. So the obvious reason for Amazon to remove Macmillan titles was that Amazon would love to sell ebooks for cheap but in greater quantity to make up for the loss from cheaper ebooks’ prices, and at the same time to undercut its competitors such as Sony, Apple, and whoever else that is selling books and ebooks online. For Macmillan, I could see that this publisher wants to sell more titles but at higher prices so more money could be made, and the Macmillan’s authors could somewhat reap higher royalties. Amazon is now candidly saying that it had made the wrong move on this whole Macmillan decision, because Amazon should not be telling the publishers what to charge. Amazon is saying that it believes many other publishers besides Macmillan are loving the idea of $9.99 digital bestsellers, and so now it’s up to Macmillan to set whatever prices for their digital titles — set a price too high, customers would hesitate in buying a digital copy of a title, and set too low of a price may stir up new controversies.
I think Amazon had done wrong on Macmillan matter, but it’s great to see it has spun around and allows a publisher to decide its own ebooks’ prices. Since Amazon isn’t the only guy in town who is selling ebooks, and so it shouldn’t be able to dictate ebooks’ prices. For authors, they now have a choice of picking which publisher they like to be published with when they have to consider about getting their books/ebooks to be sold online through Amazon. For a customer like me, I would love to see Amazon continues promoting $9.99 bestsellers, and hopefully more great ebooks could be bought at that price since ebooks are a lot cheaper to make — no printed papers and inks were wasted. It’s a democracy really, let Amazon negotiates with publishers about the right prices for ebooks, and let the publishers make theirs final decisions about the ebooks’ prices, and don’t let Amazon pulling a publisher’s ebooks off the shelves to create a lost for authors and a lost for customers (don’t in a sense that it’s a distasteful thing to do, but only Amazon has the right to decide on who it wants to be in bed with).
The impending upcoming Apple’s tablet that we keep on hearing about is a threat to Amazon’s Kindle and other black and white text rendered ebook readers? Perhaps not or…, and yet Amazon is ready to release Software Development Kit next month which allows developers to develop new applications for Kindle. Still, I think it’s hopeless for Amazon’s Kindle and other black and white text rendered ebook readers if someone comes out first with a colored ebook readers (I’m looking at you Apple’s tablet). Apple’s tablet could very well be used as ebook reader or more like an e-magazine reader?
An Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, talked about how Amazon was able to survive a bad economy. The idea was to do a good job in a cumulative basis. Amazon is proud of its employees who had done exceptionally job in providing fast delivery service, low prices, and other Amazon’s services to the customers from the previous four to five years. A teacher thinks this is a brilliant truth. She goes on and explains that as a teacher, she feels like merit pay system that the educational reformers want may not work (i.e., superficial). Teacher is there to teach, and each teacher is only a single piece of a puzzle that helps churn out good students over the course of several years. If you don’t know what merit pay is, here is the link to explain what is merit pay. In my opinion, merit pay is somewhat superficial, but it does have benefits. It’s like an incentive for better teaching, and maybe merit pay is just one piece of a puzzle in making the whole educational system works better in the long run.
As I had warned my readers in couple past posts about the danger of cloud computing as it has a great potential for hacking from hackers. I wasn’t wrong! A malicious bonet was discovered within Amazon’s EC2 (cloud computing), and if it was not exposed, it could help hackers in stealing countless logins and passwords and account numbers and credit cards and other highly sensitive information such as banking. You could say, it’s a dangerous business for all of us to pool all of our personal and highly confidential information together in one area, because hackers love that. Look at the Internet, it’s basically a focus for everyone to gather for all sources of things, and it’s also a focus for hackers to target — the rule is simple, hackers like to target massive concentration of anything that may lead to some type of monetary rewards. Microsoft’s Windows(s) was and still are the favorite targets over Linux for hackers.
It doesn’t take a genius or a rocket scientist to figure out that the next big thing for hackers is cloud computing. Cloud computing isn’t new, because Gmail has been around for quite a long time (the same with Yahoo’s email), and it’s one form of cloud computing, but Gmail is somewhat more secured than the cloud computing form of Amazon’s EC2, because hackers cannot pretend to be a good guy by uploading malicious system images into the cloud to be used as instances for launching new servers. Further detail of hacking is not clear, unless you’re the hacker that hacked EC2 yourself. Luckily, Amazon says that they had removed the malicious bonet known as Zeus, but how many more of those that aren’t yet discovered? Source.
I just found out about CamelCamelCamel.com. It seems to be one of the best places online to visit first before you want to purchase anything that is technological related on Amazon.com. Why? This website shows you the price history of each product on Amazon. It even provides you a price history chart and price drop alerts. If you’re one of those online shopping addicts and an Amazon’s hardcore shopper, I think CamelCamelCamel.com can be very informative for you. For an example, technology shoppers should beware of price histories of gadgets and electronic products on Amazon, because being aware of a product’s price history could help you catch a sweet deal. Also, make sure you read a product’s reviews from other buyers before you pay up; often enough, you could save yourself a ton of headache by reading accurate product’s reviews. So the next time you get ready to buy a new camera, a new laptop, a new book, and other similar products on Amazon, just remember to check out CamelCamelCamel.com.
Ebook is where heated debates can only get even more, you can fill in the rest. Amazon thinks Barnes & Noble’s Nook’s ebook’s lending feature is a joke. As an Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos sadly poked fun at Nook and said that Nook’s ebook lending feature is very limited, because once you lent an ebook one time to a single person, the very ebook you lent out cannot be lent again. Even though when saying this, Jeff Bezos probably knew that Kindle has not allowed such a thing as lending an ebook to a friend.
The idea of carrying a library of books around you in your backpack or a small handbag seems so delicious that many of us are not so hesitantly in spewing out money digitally to acquire more ebooks. Ebooks sellers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble know this fact very well, and this is why the fight for bigger share in ebook market can only get worse. Customers do not have to be worried though, because the ebook war may bring many good deals as ebook prices and ebook readers may get cheaper.
The news about Barnes & Noble could not meet the demand of Nook’s pre-orders, this may have been worried Amazon. Competition is on! Will Amazon add lending ebooks feature onto its Kindle? I just hope Amazon will do so, because then I’ll have a difficult choice in picking which ebook reader I will buy. I’m surprised that Apple is still only meddling with iTunes and iPhone and iPod, but had not yet release an iBook, because the more the merrier. Source.
Amazon may have to compete against AT&T as AT&T is offering something that is similar to Amazon Web Services known as AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service. This service is best for people who want to start a business that’s in need of the ability to scale servers. This service is also great for web developers who need a quick way to fire up a server at a cheap cost and using a pay as you go model.
Amazon has a head start, but if AT&T provides competitive prices, then Amazon may have to worry. Cloud compute structure may have stability problem if AT&T or Amazon is not carefully managed. Customers may sway between both companies depend on stability of the services. As now, AT&T is only offer AT&T Synaptic Compute as a Service to customers that are living in the U.S., but Amazon has been offering Amazon Web Services to U.S. and Europe. Source.
Recent Comments