Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Why Stephen King is cool

Author:Paul Snively
Posted:7/25/2000; 11:53:12 AM
Topic:Why Stephen King is cool
Msg #:19048 (In response to 19041)
Prev/Next:19047 / 19049

Jonathan Hendry: Is Amazon actually making any money on the King downloads? It doesn't seem like it. If that's the case, buying the story through Amazon might hurt them more than ignoring them, in this case.

Maybe. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. I'm not transacting with them as a matter of principle. As Dave says, it's not a question of whether they're making money or not; I don't begrudge them profitability (far from it; I wish they would attain profitability)! The issue is them being a gatekeeper, a warden, a centralized force coming between me and the artist. A middleman. The net doesn't need middlemen. It doesn't need the overhead, whether financially or logistically. It doesn't need the inefficiency, whether financially or logistically. There's nothing to be gained by allowing entities, whether personal, corporate, or governmental, to "intermediate" our transactions online unless they are performing some service that is useful to both parties, e.g. escrow or brokerage.

I'm sure Amazon's being used because they agreed to absorb the transaction costs for these $1 transactions. Mr. King went for it, I'm guessing, because he didn't realize that you don't have to be Amazon to be able to deal in such small transactions. It's important to make artists aware that there are solutions besides either charging enough to cover your transactions costs using a system like cybercash or by getting a behemoth who can afford to absorb the transaction costs to handle them.

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