INDEX // mb Ideas on Publishing Books in Canada (and other attempts to write good)

Hey Mark. A couple of quick thoughts…

I think these acquisitions are kind of different. And who else would have benefited from buying the apps apart from Amazon?

SnapTell is neat but it is probably going to be difficult to monetarize for anyone other than Amazon(and even they might struggle) so who else would want it?

And with Stanza my feeling is that they simply bought the competition. Stanza probably wasn’t quite such a direct threat to anyone else’s business model, but as the Kindle was being outflanked by the iPhone, Amazon needed to be in that market. Buying Stanza was easier than developing something themselves.

Posted by Dan on 18 June 2009 @ 11am

The thing about SnapTell is that they’re not only book-related. It is image recognition. Not only does this aid in Amazon’s search engine, but it puts Amazon in every single retailer whenever someone has a cell phone with a camera.

I’d wonder however why Google or Microsoft didn’t acquire this company considering the fact that they both want to monetize any sort of step between the consumer and the producer. If eBay weren’t in such a crappy position, I’d say they should have acquired it.

I’d agree with Dan that Stanza was acquired by Amazon to place themselves further into the race (considering the # of existing users) however I wouldn’t say that the Kindle was being outflanked by the iPhone considering the sales of newer books through the Kindle. I still have an inkling that dedicated e-Book reading devices have some ways to go but the smartphone and netbook/smartbook is definitely beating on it at the moment.

Posted by Ehren on 19 June 2009 @ 2am

@Dan — i guess I am saying two things 1) Amazon is buying up the business and no one else is (snaptell, stanza, booktour, audible, mobipocket). They are acquiring offensively and defensively. Some of these purchases will turn out to be smart moves and others won’t. 2) I also wanted to raise the question of why they are the only company active in the sector. They are the biggest and richest and these purchases will help keep them that way. Not sure. But I am thinking the companies on the sidelines won’t buy for internal-cultural reasons rather than business ones. That basically forfeits the future transnational book business to Bezos before the game event starts. Indigo is an unlikely incubator for start-up-like companies, but it would be better for everybody if selling to Amazon wasn’t an entrepreneur’s single exit.

Posted by mb on 19 June 2009 @ 3am

Quite true Mark. These days, nearly every start-up is looking to become an acquisition by some larger business organization or reach some sort of valuation like Facebook.

Odd… i don’t recall commenting at 2am…

Posted by Ehren on 20 June 2009 @ 6am