I think we're talking about two different things here. Amazon is already a near-monopolistic
bookseller, for both ebooks and print. However Amazon the company are relatively new to the
publishing of books - they still rely on both commercial publishers and self-publishers to do all the work of putting the book together, with Amazon supplying the sales infrastructure.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Graham  The danger is that the established publishing houses - who must know all of this but seem to have been caught on the hop - will get their e-houses in e-order and step in to assume their traditional role as gatekeepers of quality. |
I think the danger is that the current trend for cheap or free ebooks is making the commercial model unsustainable. And if Amazon does kill off its suppliers of quality ebooks, who's going to buy a Kindle just to read rubbish?
I honestly don't know how Amazon's business model is going to play out. They are already facing problems of "book spam" - thousands of uploads of out-of-copyright works, or outright random text, swamping genuine self-published work. As usual, the lazy, greedy and unprincipled are spoiling the internet for everyone.