The Kindle Revolution & The Collapse of Borders
Borders, one of America's largest book store chains, is currently getting a massive reality check. They have been out marketed by their competition, and more specifically, their online competition in Amazon.
5 Reasons Why Borders Collapsed
- They failed to appreciate the significance of the internet. Their online store never caught up to their competitors.
- They ignored obvious market trends moving towards e-books & got into the game way too late.
- They'd adopted the false business principle of "let's keep doing the same thing because it's worked for us very well in the past 40 years".
- Being one of the biggest book chains does not automatically secure longevity or even a position in the market.
- In any business you cannot dictate to the market, you need to respond to your market.
How The Book Market Has Changed
More and more people are now shopping online. For everything, not just books. Anyone in business cannot and should not ignore this fact.
People looking to get published had to submit their manuscripts to various publishers and go through numerous rejections before their books saw the light of day. Of those that did get published, the publisher would often receive the bulk of the royalties. Now anyone can publish a book (even if it's an e-book for now) and sell it from their own website or on Amazon. There will always be a demand for printed books, but if it's hard to get published you need to go through the back door.
Even ten years ago, most people would walk into brick and mortar bookstores to buy their books. Now there is no need for that, even if people wanted to buy a book in person. Supermarkets like Target that are not traditionally book retailers are selling books. In fact, some of these supermarkets are selling them at or below cost just to get people into their stores and benefit from sales of other items while they are there! Bookstores have had to compete with this too.
While Borders was too busy focusing on expanding its current operations, it got itself too distracted to notice these major changes in the market.
New Book Market Share
Amazon's Kindle 3
Amazon is currently on its third generation of its popular e-book reader, the Kindle. Since the first version, it has decreased in size. It's gotten lighter. Turning the pages of an e-book happens faster. The battery lasts a whole month (with wireless off)! You can sort your books into "collections" so you can find them more quickly (a great feature when you have hundreds of books like me).
A lot of people compare it to the iPad and say an iPad can do heaps more. Sure. But when it comes to reading books, there is no comparison. The Kindle 3 is the best e-book reader currently on the market. Watch the video at the bottom of this hub to see how the Kindle 3 stacks up against Border's "kobo" reader and Barnes and Noble's "Nook" reader.
There are a number of versions of Kindle 3, but I would highly recommend the WiFi with 3G version. I would also recommend getting the Kindle Cover that has a light in it. We had a power outage at home recently and the only thing I could do was read my Kindle. The light in the cover is powered from the Kindle itself, and I can tell you it lasted for hours that night. I had to turn it off and go to sleep, it didn't run out.
13 Reasons Why You Need To Get A Kindle Right Now
- It can store thousands of e-books.
- Light to carry, especially when traveling. Light as a paperback novel in fact.
- You can even check your Gmail, Facebook, Twitter etc on the Kindle's web browser.
- Has the ability for you to post a review on the e-books you've read.
- You can highlight snippets of text that you want to reference later on.
- As we get older, we can take advantage of the ability to increase the font size at the push of a button.
- If our eyes are troubling us, the Kindle can read the book to us. There are speakers in the back and a headphone jack as well if you prefer. You can choose a male or female voice too!
- Buying an e-book is a fraction of the $ price of a hardcopy book.
- There are heaps of FREE e-books on Amazon you can download. The Top 100 Free e-Book list is updated on an hourly basis.
- The WiFi version has international roaming capability so you can download purchased e-books directly onto your Kindle for free.
- Amazon's pearl-ink technology means there is no glare when reading out in the sun, unlike the iPad which has a glass screen.
- Supports pdf files.
- Can be charged through the USB port on your computer (or you can get a separate charger if you prefer).