I've been shopping for books on Amazon quite a bit recently. I've noticed in the searches lately that a majority of links are defaulting to audio or Kindle editions of books. By "a lot", I mean most. At first I brushed this off as a marketing decision: Kindle books are selling at a higher rate, or they are trying to push for increasing use of Kindle, blah blah blah.
But then it occurred to me, after thinking about some of the censorship issues, that this is going to create quite a predicament given sufficient time. Digitizing all of our books and giving ownership of that property to a monopolistic company to completely control distribution and access to.
It got me thinking, especially considering the "dot com" bubble in the 90s, and how several key companies (the monsters of today) escaped that crash, and why these companies are so heavily subsidized by to the government - to the extent that there isn't much practical separation between federal and private interest. Amazon utilizes the US postal service's infrastructure and manpower for Gods sake.
It might be too paranoid, but just look at the trajectory with respect to books. Traditional publishing is dying overall, perhaps not in certain niches. It just seems apparent we've got a situation as it concerns books and Amazon is apparently pushing heavily for you to start accepting digital books, and for your access to them to be subscription as a service at some point.
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Darwinxmachina ago
Additionally, it can take weeks to get a used hardcopy book through Amazon. This adds to the suspicion. That their original service is now... junk.
chirogonemd ago
I've noticed this as well. Everything points to the fact they are actively discouraging people getting physical copies of books. It's not that they are turning away that business. Certainly not. They'll take your money if all you want is a hard copy. It just concerns me that they are nudging the trend a certain way until the public accepts books as a subscription service and we are all paying just to read "our" books. I mean they probably won't even allow local download, or do like they do now with some proprietary file format meant for their reader.
It's just not good. We need to stock up on physical copies of books. Like, now.