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msknight

Michelle's corner

Michelle Knight. Writer, photographer, programmer, truck driver and general, all round nut case. Life is a journey and that's what this blog will probably end up being. Let's see where we go, eh? ;-)

Currently reading

Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics
Dalai Lama XIV, Ian Coghlan
Progress: 23/433 pages

Waterstones stops selling e-books

Here's the BBC News article - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/36360531

 

They stopped selling Kindle reders in October. The question is... why? They said at the time that they were "getting virtually no sales." Read that as, making no money beyond the device sales, probably. As to why they are pointing people at Kobo... is this an anti-Amazon stance from Waterstones now?

 

Lets face it... if you don't have access to a feed from the virtual book store, then how are you going to make an ongoing sales stream?

 

Amazon are coming in to the physical book shop arena, but they have an ace uptheri sleeve.. the ability offer pick ups of other items from their book shops. This will likely give Amazon an edge in the physical store presence that Waterstones won't have.

 

This, is going to get interesting.

 

What would I do if I were Waterstones? Well, reviving various programs such as each shop supporting local authors. They have the local contacts that Amazon doesn't have. They need to go beyond just piling books on shelves and hoping. I'd be delving in to that haystack and trying to search for the golden needles... becuase that's one area where Amazon already have the drop... but the lack of returns from Amazon are already giving new authors... ahem... the needle.

 

Grab the popcorn... this is gonna be a good one.