Ebook

In the past, product focused success depended on exploiting capabilities in branding, manufacturing, distributions, etc., to deliver the best product. Today, companies focus on carrying over relationships, with best consumers and partners to deliver the best experience. The introduction of the Kindle Fire by Amazon pressed forward with a full-fledged ecosystem strategy. Amazon concentrates on a new business model, differentiating itself from Apple in both its footprint and profit model.

The introduction of the e-books is a new business model preferred by many publishers and readers to protect the ecosystem and save costs. Furthermore, it creates great convenient to consumers being able to read more than ten books by carrying a mere Apple iPad. Quality authors who kept the rights to their work realized that it is an advantage to publish themselves on Kindle rather than begging for contracts from major publishers. This reflects the beginning of a new model of mainstream book publishing.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said, “Invention comes in many forms and at many scales. The most radical and transformative of inventions are often those that empower others to unleash their creativity – to pursue their dreams. These innovative, large-scale platforms are not zero-sum – they create win-win situations and create significant value for developers, entrepreneurs, customers, authors, and readers.....”(Dignan 2012).

B&N is Amazon’s main competitor in the e-book space (Webb 2012). The expansion of these companies into the e-book model further explains the transition of the world market to this new business model whereby the traditional “hard copies” will no longer be preferred in the near future.

To conclude, the introduction of e-books benefits readers in many ways. Not only does it create a better ecosystem, it increases the convenience of users needing only to carry a tablet instead of dozens of books and includes videos and full coloured illustrations as well as links to websites which increases the level of interest of the readers. These hypotheses are supported by the increasing competition between major companies such as Amazon and B&N. According to the Association of American Publishers, in the first quarter of 2012 the e-book market overtaken printed books in the American market. Although currently e-books are not highly preferred in the Asian market, it is believed that there will come a time in the near future where e-books will dominate the world publishing market.

Reference

Webb J 2012, ‘Publishing News: B&N improves its ecosystem’, toc.oreilly.com, viewed on 7^th November 2012, <http://toc.oreilly.com/2012/09/publishing-news-bn-improves-its-ecosystem.html)>.

Dignan L 2012, ‘Amazon’s Bezos: ‘Even well meaning gatekeepers slow innovation’, www.zdnet.com, viewed on 7^th November 2012, <http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/amazons-bezos-even-well-meaning-gatekeepers-slow-innovation/74116>.

Wikert J 2012, ‘Why used Ebook Ecosystem makes sense’, jwikert.typepad.com, viewed on 7^th November 2012,<http://jwikert.typepad.com/the_average_joe/2012/08/why-a-used-ebook-ecosystem-makes-sense.html>.