Ok Amazon creates an ebook reader to sell digital book and its now followed by Dymocks in Australia who have launched a website with 120,000 titles and now plan to announce in the next week a deal to line these up with a ebook reader. We understand that it’s not Sony and its obviously not Kindle and given its European, it narrows to possibilities down considerably.
So what‘s next, WHS, Waterstones, Borders, Banes and Noble?
Do we have al the usual suspects all line up against a brand and format wars?
All this posturing and competitive testosterone is not good for consumer confidence and leads to uncertainty which is the mother of all inertia. We already have debates over Adobe, Mobi, Sony, Microsoft formats, now we have battles to tie ereaders to retailers. All at a time when we are trying to create consumer confidence and a market in a content deprived vacuum.
Please we beg all retailer to think collaboration and co-operation and not short term false competitive advantage. After all we now have publishers fighting to create direct digital markets and brand and for this to spill into retail is just inviting someone to enter left field as Apple did in music.
