William - you bring up a good point. This is a land grab. But the nature of this land grab differs from historical land grabs (such as the California gold rush in the 1840s and the Nevada silver rush in the 1860s). During the gold rush, there was a limited amount of land - if you were a miner, you went to California, you found some land, claimed it as your own, and hoped and prayed it contained a lot of gold (and by the way, many miners sold stock in their gold mines). With the gold rush, at some point, all the land was taken, and new comers could not enter the market (there was no more land to claim).
There are no geographical limitations imposed on the internet land grab - in essence, there is an unlimited amount of land. What is key with the internet is to stake your claim on a piece of "cyber-land" and get people to come to it. So, this is more about marketing and building a brand. And Amazon has done an excellent job in marketing and building a brand. But to date, we don't know how loyal customers will be once they come to the Amazon land. Because it's so easy for customers to leave (just a mouse click), there is a risk that customers will leave. And the nature of the internet means that there is going to be a lot of competition that is going to try to get those customers that are currently buying books on Amazon land to pick up and leave and buy books somewhere else. I'm not saying that this will definitely happen - in truth I don't know. But I do know that there is a risk.
Thanks,
Eric Wells |
