Manchurian Books

INVASION OF THE AMAZONS
By: Sam Vaknin

The last few months have witnessed a bloodbath in tech stocks
coupled with a frantic re-definition of the web and of every
player in it (as far as content is concerned).

This effort is three pronged:

Some companies are gambling on content distribution and the
possession of the attendant digital infrastructure.
MightyWords, for example, stealthily transformed itself from a
"free-for-all-everyone-welcome" e-publisher to a distribution
channel of choice works (mainly by midlist authors). It now
aims to feed its content to content-starved web sites. In the
process, it shed thousands of unfortunate authors who did not
meet its (never stated) sales criteria.

Others bet the farm on content creation and packaging. Bn.com
invaded the digital publishing and POD (Print on Demand)
businesses in a series of lightning purchases. It is now the
largest e-book store by a wide margin.

But Amazon seemed to have got it right once more. The web's
own virtual mall and the former darling of Wall Street has
diversified into micropayments.


Pages:
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37