subject: What Does Amazon Rely On To Dominate The Digital Publishing? [print this page] When Amazon was established 15 years ago, it is only a new book sales site. Some people expected the nation's largest bookstore Barnes & Noble will soon get rid of it. I am afraid that even the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos can not predict that it will become dominant in the digital publishing industry in the future.
The reality is that today Amazon has been leading the online books selling. The traditional physical books are defeated. The second ranking Borders bookstore was forced to close down. Barnes & Noble e-book has to turn to e- book selling and the development of e-book reader.
Amazon said this fall it will directly sign with authors and publish books and e-books. This means that Amazon will turn from the seller to publishers. The traditional publishing chain "author - agent - Press - Amazon - reader" would be further reduced to "author- Amazon - the reader." This is not Amazon's sudden counter-attack. In fact, the A-mazon Encore project which was put into operation two years ago had began signing directly with the authors and the online sales of books.
Amazon dominates the digital publishing industry relies on its low-cost strategy. Since the introduction of e-book sales, Amazon has been competing with publishers for pricing rights. At current Amazon gets 30% from e-book sales and the publisher and authors get 70%.
After deducting the publishers and the middle agent fees, only about 15% can get into the hands of the authors. Therefore, Amazon eliminates the middle part to directly contact with the authors. It can significantly reduce costs and the authors can obtain higher returns than the original ways. Pushed by Amazon, in the April of this year, the sales of e-books have exceeded traditional books.
The second promoter for Amazon to dominate is undoubtedly cloud computing. The cloud computing makes Amazon the seller and manager of the online digital content. E-books, online music, video and other content are stored in the cloud. The consumers only need to get to access to the cloud through hand-held devices to enjoy the content. In fact, Amazon is the low-key pioneer of the cloud computing.
Through the layout in the years, Amazon has infiltrated in every segment of the publishing industry and market sectors. In addition to providing self-published service, it acquired Audible and the second-hand book shop AbeBooks. It even bought book readers online community Shelfari. Amazon's ability to strike a balance in the future pace of is relevant to the success of its dominance of the digital publishing industry.
