When it comes to consumerism, competition is a good thing.
With companies trying to win your hard-earned dollar, they’ll throw price cuts and deals in your face until you buy their product. That said, competition isn’t so great if you’re one of the companies trying to compete for people’s money.
A company could provide a great service, like allowing people to rent movies for a reasonable price, and be very successful at it. Then, one day, someone comes in and provides a better, more convenient service and puts the original company out of business.
Sorry, Blockbuster.
Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, started out simply selling books in 1995. Today, the company sells all sorts of products, both physical and digital.
The online giant has recently made a big push in terms of digital distribution. From the release of the original Kindle e-reader in 2007 to the Amazon Appstore last March, Amazon has made huge strides when it comes to software downloads.
Online services from companies like Netflix and Amazon are impacting their brick-and-mortar counterparts every year. Along with the aforementioned Blockbuster bankruptcy, bookstore giant Borders closed its doors earlier this year — partially due to e-books and Amazon.
Why leave your house and go to a bookstore when you can simply click a button to buy your favorite book conveniently from home, usually for much cheaper?
However, Amazon isn’t satisfied with bringing down retail stores — it has its sights set on publishers, as well.
Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in both physical and digital form from an array of genres, The New York Times reports.
Many publishers say the online giant is going after their top authors by trying to top services publishers used to provide, such as larger advances and more freedom while writing.
“Everyone’s afraid of Amazon,” Richard Curtis, agent and e-book publisher told The New York Times. “If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you opportunity.”
If I owned a publishing company, I’d be worried.
If Amazon throws enough money around — which it can do easily — the company should have no difficulty bringing in top authors for its new publishing venture.
Also, by cutting out the middleman, Amazon could provide readers with books for an even cheaper price than it already does.
While e-books haven’t taken the world by storm yet, it’s only a matter of time until a new generation of kids don’t even know what a physical book looks like.
Digital distribution is the future, and it seems like Amazon will be leading the way when the world finally makes that big leap from physical to digital content.
Here’s hoping, for my sake, Amazon will start electronically publishing newspapers as well as books.
 
Adam Arinder is a 22-year-old communication studies senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_aarinder.
 
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Contact Adam Arinder at [email protected]