Interesting thoughts. I don’t see Kindle Unlimited lasting.
Amazon’s war on publishers reached a crescendo yesterday with the leak of Kindle Unlimited, a subscription plan that would allow readers to pay $9.99 per month for unlimited access to the Kindle ebook library. No longer content with simply demanding steeper discounts from publishers like Hachette — which is locked in a bitter fight with the e-commerce giant over book prices — Amazon is finally reaching its end goal: the complete dissolution of the traditional book business model through a vertically integrated publishing platform, from writer to Kindle.
The idea of a “Netflix for Books” has been a popular startup theme for a while, and Kindle Unlimited certainly enters a crowded field. Oyster raised $17 million of venture capital over its two rounds of financing, and Scribd recently pivoted from hosting documents to a book subscription service. Yet, only Amazon currently has the scale to see such…
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