Another day, another volley in the Amazon-Hachette battle, this time from Amazon, in which it explains what it wants (all ebooks to be $9.99 or less) and lays out some math that it alleges shows that everyone wins when Amazon gets its way.
Some thoughts:
1.I think Amazon’s math checks out quite well, as long as you have the ground assumption that Amazon is the only distributor of books that…
The impressive thing about this, and I know that my partner and I are more ethical shoppers than many, but is that Amazon have managed to overcome even my laissez-faire attitude to them when convenience trumps everything else.
I mean, it’s tricky ‘n all, and I was already pissed off at them for not paying tax in the UK, but really they’ve even managed to persuade me to find other places to shop online.
I suppose one of the problems with being an online retailer is that whilst it’s convenient to order online, it’s pretty damn easy to switch your ‘allegiance’. I mean typing in www.hive.co.uk is pretty much as easy as doing so with amazon. Indeed, it’s actually fewer letters. So that’s good.
Though given that I refer to Loyalty cards as Disloyalty cards (‘cos I have so many – and better than that, they often reward you for shopping elsewhere. Last time I went to a supermarket I got about 6 vouchers for things we might actually buy at some point) I’m probably not a model for keeping customers ‘loyal’ to big brands*.
* That said, we’re both completely loyal to our greengrocer, even going so far as to both comment on feeling guilty if we shop somewhere else… which we only ever do if we can’t get over to his shop.
