Let me just go ahead and say it: I really like this deal – [Hoepli and Kindle Press Release – PDF] – through which Hoepli provides space in its own historical bookstore for Amazon to exhibit Kindle, and I congratulate both Hoepli and Amazon.
And yet I wouldn’t mind it, however, if publishers, bookstores and even the intelligentsia of our local authors and agents would just quit with all the habitual anti-Amazon, anti-Apple and anti-Google clamour which, in light of their real behavior, is really hypocritical and sickening.
They all wanted to keep the prices of ebooks higher than Amazon wanted, and so they demanded control over the prices, but now they’ve completely lost control of themselves.
Mondadori won’t stop telling everyone that “the Amazon system” is their ‘enemy number 1’, and then they try to fight Amazon by surrendering everything (including bookstores) over to another giant (although new-comer) like Kobo.
So what else do we need? That IBS or Feltrinelli gives in to Nook, for example. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like that, and I’d find it to be an incredibly wise and powerful move on their part. And maybe they’ll really do it. But I have no doubt that if I asked them right now they would firmly deny it while laughing in my face, perhaps even a little angry, like they laughed in my face just over two years ago when I asked “What do you think you’ll do when Amazon hits Italy?” and their answer was “You’ve got to be kidding, Amazon will never make it to Italy…“.
Well, my friends, welcome to the real world of 21st century publishing, that which up to just three years ago you denied completely and up to just one or two years ago you thought you could thwart and delay (like educational and magazine publishing companies still think they can do, which we will soon be talking about).
Il blog di Antonio Tombolini
