Yesterday Amazon announced that they scored an exclusive deal with publisher Andrew Wylie (clients: Oliver Sacks, Salman Rushdie, and Philip Roth plus more) that will give them the sole rights to distribute books by mentioned (and unmentioned) authors for a full 2 years. At first, it seems like a great way to push ebooks further and yeah, is a nice little nest egg for Amazon. But when you sit back and look at the bigger picture, it’s a very bad decision. First and foremost, no other outlets have access to these exclusive titles — no other ereader devices and not even traditional paperback versions.
Essentially, Amazon is setting a precedent for other publishers and ebook storefronts to create their own exclusive “talent clubs”, thereby fragmenting the market in an extreme sense. Just think, in a years time the sole decision when purchasing an ereader is: “What books can I or can’t I download?” That’s the wrong question to be asking. Features of the hardware itself and provided 3rd party services should be number one — not worrying about how many different ereaders you’ll need to read books from all of your favorite authors….
If I were a book worm, I’d sell my ereader pronto, and move back to simpler tree carcass-based books. Yeah, these exclusive deals will prevent some books from paperback lives, but at least I could walk in and pick whatever books are available without having to worry if my eyes will decode their cryptic words or not. The only entity these exclusive deals benefit are the companies that handle the sale and distribution — not the customer base. If anything, this approach will increase piracy of ebooks drastically if the exclusive deal approach takes off. Then in return, incompetent exec’s of publishing companies will push harder and even more restrictive DRM upon us. Vicious cycle it is.
So tell me bookworms, how are you feeling about this all? Exclusive ereader/ebook deals have been made in the past. But the extent to which Amazon’s goes (2 years) and the likelyhood other storefronts and publishers will follow suit means the ebook landscape is about to be a land full of walled gardens, requiring expensive purchases of multiple pieces of hardware. Are you up to it?
