Burning the Page: The eBook revolution and the future of reading

decides to yank the buy buttons from, but contractually, it’s something Amazon is allowed to do. But why would the online retailer want to do that? It’s like Amazon is shooting itself in the foot. Perhaps Amazon had previously shot itself in the foot so many times that it thought it had bulletproof shoes. Or enough scar tissue not to mind.
    Yanking the buy button is a punitive gesture that Amazon has been known to pull with publishers, like a tyrannical Byzantine emperor who holds ultimate sway over his court. It’s a powerful threat in business negotiations. But Macmillan wasn’t a mere vassal to some king’s court. That publisher is an empire unto itself in the publishing world. The move to yank books backfired when publishers became enraged and retaliated as a unified group. Ultimately, Amazon needed the books and the support of publishers and its customers, so the company backed down.
    Some choices are tough, but leaders are judged by the decisions they make when given tough choices. I believe the Amazon leaders made a mistake. An ethical retailer has a social contract to uphold with its consumers. It’s not appropriate for a retailer to yank or censor content based only on its internal machinations, its policies for better profit margins.
    Thankfully, I believe this example shows the power of public outrage to enact change. It’s possible to shame a corporation that has done something wrong or, at the very least, to make a company aware that it should have been more careful about its actions. The same public outrage was hurled at Apple when it released a “Baby Shaker” app that rewarded users who could shake a virtual baby to death. Developed by another company, this iPhone app is grisly and should never have passed Apple’s QA standards. Mercifully, public outcry caused it to be pulled from the app store in less than a day.
    No company has perfect QA policies or editorial standards for what content to shelve in its store. Companies need to listen to consumers, read what people post on product reviews, and monitor the blogosphere. But reciprocally, companies need to have strong enough standards in place to avoid smear campaigns and acts of undeserved bullying. Knowing when to remove or reinstate content requires an ethical balance and strong sensibilities.
    It’s a tough editorial choice: though a given book may be objectionable, where do we draw the line when it comes to free speech? And more importantly, who is drawing the line? What moral or literary sensibilities do the executives of Amazon have? What about the retailers at Barnes & Noble or Google or Apple? You have to ask yourself whether you trust these men (because they are mostly men—and mostly white men, at that). Do you trust them to make decisions for you on what books you’re permitted to buy?
    http://jasonmerkoski.com/eb/5.html

The First Competitors
    You can create an innovative breakthrough, but you can’t own it forever. Eventually, competitors come out of the woodwork, challenging you with similar or sometimes advanced versions of the very innovation you crafted. For Amazon, the first major competition came from an old rival, a company that Amazon was used to competing with in books. But it was a company that, back then, would have seemed most unlikely to make a tech-product marvel. Yet in November 2009, that’s exactly what it did.
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    Los Angeles is all sunshine and short sleeves. It’s still got a 1960s design, like it was influenced by The Jetsons , but with more palm trees and fewer spaceships. It’s got atomic roadside diners and terrific tangled, spangled freeway sprawl. It’s got the best mom-and-pop taco shacks in the most unlikely of places, like wedged between Laundromats and exotic pet stores in strip malls.
    I’m at one of those strip malls on a long layover from a flight, visiting a Barnes & Noble store. I’ve been sitting here for a few hours watching people. I’ve been watching the kiosk where a saleslady named Bettina is showing off Barnes & Noble’s new Nook e-reader. A few people come every now and then to look at these Nooks. More often than not, people come up to ask her where the bathroom is or what time the store closes, like she works the information booth. The Nooks aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes.
    I go over to her and show an interest in the Nook. To torment her a little, I keep calling it a Kindle. “What can these Kindles do?” I ask. She laughs, explains, and walks me