Amazon.com's Kindle: Publishing Industry's iPod?

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Themes: Strategy
Pub Date : 2009
Countries : US
Industry : Services

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Case Code : INA0111
Case Length : 25 Pages
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Amazon.com's Kindle: Publishing Industry's iPod?

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Kindle and the Future of Publishing Industry cont...

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On the other hand, Barnes & Noble Inc., America's largest book store chain entered the e-book arena. It opened its online e-book store with more than 700,000 titles. It is planning to come with more than 1 million titles within a year. It also entered into strategic partnership with Plastic Logic (a UK-based company specialising in polymer transistors and electronics), to compete with Amazon and Sony in the e-book reader segment

Publishing industry is prone to yet another threat in the 21st century i.e., self-publishing. Traditionally, books are published through the traditional publishing channels. However, technology paved way to another emerging trend which is backed by the concept of 'Print On Demand' (POD). For example, Jaya Jha and Abhaya Agarwal from India started Pothi.com (in 2006), a web portal which publishers can use to publish their content.60 Self-publishing enables the authors to directly publish their content online rather than approaching a publisher. Though the POD is now widely used for corporate printing, the book publishing is still in the experimental phase.

According to Ravi Bapna, associate professor of information systems at the Carlson School of Management, "There are three major forces working in favor of a transformative impact of such technologies at this moment. First, consumers want ubiquitous portable access to their digital media. This is common now for music, and books and print media are the logical next steps. Second, platforms such as Amazon have a critical mass of publishers and buyers, and have worked out the complex economics of two-sided networks such as these to rapidly scale. Third, the Green Revolution is here to stay; cutting trees for paper comes at a high societal cost, and Kindle-like technologies are well suited to this new reality."61 In the light of all these developments, the major question is, what would be advisable for the e-book reader companies and the publishing industry - to compete or to collaborate.

60]Pain Paromita, "Be your own publisher", http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2009/06/15/stories/2009061550090300.htm, June 15th 2009
61]"Read It and Weep: Will Amazon's Kindle Succeed in India?", op.cit.