A while ago, news broke out about Amazon reaching a deal with Wylie Agency to distribute the work of its clients through Kindle store. Random House was not too happy about the exclusive deal, nor were some of Amazon’s competitors. Unfortunately for Amazon, the deal seems to have fallen through. It seems Random House was able to convince Wylie Agency to back out of the deal. After all, the company was ready to boycott future works by the agency:

The Wylie Agency’s decision to sell e-books exclusively to Amazon for titles which are subject to active Random House agreements undermines our longstanding commitments to and investments in our authors, and it establishes this agency as our direct competitor

Amazon has removed the titles in discussion from Kindle store. They are expected to make their way back to Amazon Kindle store in the near future (according to a statement delivered by Random House):

Amazon has been including free Kindle books in its Kindle bestseller list for quite some time. We never understood the point behind including free e-books on a list that was supposed to be about “sold” e-books. Besides, it is not fair to put paid and free e-books on the same list as free products can distort such lists. According to Publisher Weekly, Amazon is planning to split its Kindle bestseller list into two to make it easier for e-book shoppers to find best-selling e-books as well as the best free books in its store.

As you can expect, not everyone is happy about this change. Hitting the bestsellers list on Amazon only means more sales for publishers. Many independent publishers have been using free books to push their other books on Amazon. It is easy to compete with the top dogs when one is offering free products. When the planned changes go into effect, small publishers will have to find another way to game Amazon’s charts.

Are Amazon or other e-book sellers’ prices too high? That’s the question many experts and e-book fans have been asking in the past few months. When Amazon launched the Kindle product line, it started pushing the fact that “most” e-books were priced at $9.99 as a way to grab more market-share. After all, if you get a bargain price on all your purchases, your device will pay itself off in a short period of time. But is charging $9.99 for e-b00ks what you would call a bargain? Let’s not forget that Amazon does indeed a whole lot more than $9.99 for a decent number of books, so chances are that you don’t really save too much money on your favorite books. But regardless of that fact, paying $9.99 for a book that you can’t sell or transfer to someone else is not getting a bargain.

A recent story on Wall Street Journal mentioned a report by Forrester that confirmed what most of us have doubted for months. Serial readers have a lot of options when it comes to picking up a device to read e-books on. You can always pick up a netbook or a smart-phone to read your books on the go. So if you can find a way to pay less for e-books and read them on those devices, you may end up saving a whole lot of money in the long run. Amazon and other e-book reader makers need to lower e-book prices not just for us consumers but to make e-b00k readers more than they could be in the current situation. Here is what the Forrester analyst had to say about the future of e-book readers:

will never be mass-market devices like MP3 players, but they can exceed current forecasts for adoption.

One could argue that she may be right about the future of this business in the short-term. But at the same time, you should never use the word “never” when dealing with technology. With e-book prices too high and e-book readers using primitive hardware systems, the above statement may in fact be true. But even the most pessimistic experts expect Amazon and its rivals to not only improve their hardware but also lower e-book prices. These are issues that Apple had to deal with in its early days with the iPod. The iPod hardware was not perfect in those days, and the music came with DRM that put a limit on what people could do with their songs. Amazon needs to loosen up its restrictions on e-books, work on a way to get developers involved in improving the Kindle platform, and build better Kindles in the future. It may sound like a challenge, but if e-book readers are to become mainstream, something’s got to change. At the end of the day, it all comes down to innovation (product development and business model).

Your turn: are e-books too expensive currently?

It’s not everyday that you see a CEO of a top company apologize for his/her own company’s “stupid” actions. But what did you expect with Amazon? Amazon is known for putting customers first, and while you can’t keep everyone happy, I am sure Amazon’s service is much better than a lot of its competitors. The company’s actions may not be perfect, but at least we can see where Jeff wants to take the company. I was quick to bash Amazon when it did the unthinkable and removed purchased book copies from its customers’ Kindles, and to be honest the decision was a hard one to take. But I am glad Jeff Bezos took the time to address the issueon Amazon forums:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

Jeff Bezos has always been my kind of CEO. He has shown in the past that he genuinely cares about customers that have contributed to making Amazon one of the most successful companies around the world. But if Amazon was paying attention to this blog, it might have made the right decision regardless. Cameron, a good friend of K.indled, has put it best:

I think the kindle community needs to have a long discussion on this and force Amazon to explicitly state what they will and won’t do in a way that everyone know. A Kindle bill of rights so that everyone has a very clear idea of what can and can’t happen. This needs to be much more clear then the Terms of Service legalese they currently have.

It’s admirable that Jeff Bezos took time to apologize to Amazon customers. But we need action and not words. Amazon needs to be more clear about things. As much as I like Apple, it’s really getting frustrating dealing with a company that is so controlling. I hope Amazon is not planning to go in that route. But even if that’s the case, I hope Amazon will at least give us a heads up.

I still remember how a few weeks ago people were talking about how Stanza was going to challenge Amazon Kindle by letting people read e-books on their iPhones. That’s before Amazon came out with its own application for the iPhone platform. It seems Amazon is not done with its adventures in the mobile world. Lexcycle has now announced that it has been purchased by Amazon. That will put Kindle for iPhone and Stanza under one roof. With this move, Amazon has taken out one of its top competitors on iPhone. Interestingly enough, the people behind Stanza believe there will be no major changes to how Stanza operates:

Customers will still be able to browse, buy, and read ebooks from our many content partners. We look forward to offering future products and services that we hope will resonate with our passionate readers.

I am sure Amazon will add its branding material to Stanza at some point. And while I would love to see both Kindle and Stanza co-exist, I don’t believe it makes sense to confuse the consumers and provide two competing applications (is Amazon planning to make one a premium iPhone app?).

This is a great move by Amazon. It has understood early on that you can’t rely on hardware to dominate the e-book market. That’s why Amazon is bringing the Kindle platform to mobile devices such as the iPhone. While companies such as Sony are focusing so much on making their hardware as powerful as possible, Amazon is pursuing a long-term strategy that will put Amazon in the position of dominance in this market for years to come.