{"id":26101,"date":"2014-06-02T07:32:38","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T12:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26101"},"modified":"2014-06-02T07:32:38","modified_gmt":"2014-06-02T12:32:38","slug":"amazon-barnes-noble-random-penguin-and-other-publishing-monopoly-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/06\/02\/amazon-barnes-noble-random-penguin-and-other-publishing-monopoly-players\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon, Barnes &#038; Noble, Random Penguin and other publishing Monopoly players"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A quite contrarian take on the upheavals in the publishing world by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hughhowey.com\/winning-at-monopoly\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hugh Howey<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A similar game is being played in the book industry today, as it has been played in many other industries. Here at BEA, I\u2019m hearing a lot about monopolies. (And monopsonies, for those who prefer to quibble semantically rather than understand what is meant and forge ahead in productive conversation.) Practically everyone here at the book expo believes that Amazon has gotten too big, that they wield a disproportionate amount of power, and that they must be reigned in or defeated.<\/p>\n<p>I am told, without exaggeration and in all seriousness, that Amazon wants to \u201ccrush their competition.\u201d I hear that they want to \u201cput everyone else out of business.\u201d Two things are true, both of which make these statements ridiculous: The first is that Amazon most certainly doesn\u2019t want all of their competitors to go out of business, because then they\u2019d be the only game in town and the government would have no choice but to break them up. The second is that <em>of course they are acting as if they want to put their competitors out of business<\/em>. That\u2019s how you improve your business practices. You try to out-do your competition.<\/p>\n<p>Unless &#8230; you don\u2019t understand at all what it means to compete. Which I think explains the righteous indignation. But I\u2019ll get to that in a minute.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, the biggest losers in this shift have been yesterday\u2019s villains. The massive brick and mortar discounters \u2014 who once were blamed for literature\u2019s downfall, who sold \u201closs leaders,\u201d who roughed up publishers in negotiations \u2014 have become the bulwark behind which all legacy hopes now hunker. Little explored is the possibility that Amazon is helping independent bookstores by clearing out these former predators.<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to discounting and selection, B&#038;N can\u2019t compete with Amazon. When it comes to book browsing, Amazon can\u2019t compete with curated independent bookstores. If you line the three sales models up from small indie stores to big discounters to Amazon, you\u2019ll see that neighbors compete with and harm one another. Concurrent with the shuttering of Borders and the shrinking of B&#038;N, we are also seeing a rise of indie shops. Coincidence? Or are we heading toward a future where Amazon and indie bookstores coexist because they provide two very different shopping experiences and fulfill quite separate needs?<\/p>\n<p>Best estimates give Amazon roughly half of the book market. With the shutter of Borders, B&#038;N now has a more disproportionate control of brick and mortar shelfspace than Amazon does of online book sales. This is especially powerful as the rest of the smaller bookstores have less leverage for bargaining with publishers. Who is the monopoly?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A quite contrarian take on the upheavals in the publishing world by Hugh Howey: A similar game is being played in the book industry today, as it has been played in many other industries. Here at BEA, I\u2019m hearing a lot about monopolies. (And monopsonies, for those who prefer to quibble semantically rather than understand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,831],"tags":[833,484,174,469],"class_list":["post-26101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-competition","tag-innovation","tag-monopolies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6MZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26102,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26101\/revisions\/26102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}