Ebook Monopolies How Likely Are They?

Following the emergence of e-readers, new entrants offered variations similar to the Kindle Fire (Exhibit 1). Apple’s iPad was a major success and dominated the tablet market for its multipurpose and feature rich device. Both Amazon and Apple had

The digital books business eliminated the physical books in the store. Barnes & Noble offered a wide range digital platforms to its customers. The digital system was comparable with Window 8 personal computer and tablets. It also worked well with Apple’s product such as iPad, iPhone and other products like Android smartphones and tablets. The firm continued to stay in a competitive advantage position in the marketplace, even though it had to compete with many powerhouses in the same industry such as Waldenbooks and Crown Books. And yet, Barnes & Noble remains on the top of the leading U.S bookstore chains.

The Kindle website (https://kindle.amazon.com/) and the competing Nook website (http://nook.barnesandnoble.com/u) are both trying to get you to do one thing: go digital. Technology is an ever-changing area, and it has somehow made its way into almost every aspect of our lives. Improvements have been made to make it possible to read thousands of books on one device. The only catch? There are multiple companies who are competing for the consumer’s purchase of their version of the device.

Since a monopoly is the only seller of a good in the market, the demand curve is the market demand curve. Therefore a monopoly has a downward sloping demand curve, in contrast to the horizontal sloping demand curve of a firm in a competitive market (Mankiw, 2014). Monopolies aim to find the profit-maximizing price for its product. If a firm is initially producing at a low level of output, marginal revenue exceeds marginal costs (Mankiw, 2014). Every time production increases by one unit, the marginal revenue increases again and is greater than marginal costs (Mankiw, 2014). Therefore

The first challenge is the concentration in retail market, where the English-Canadian market only has one national bookstore chain, which is Chapters/Indigo. This was not an issue in the past, where in comparison to 1985, there were three national bookstore chains. The concentration in retail markets provides lower prices for consumers, but for competition it implies that there are less traditional bookstores available. One benefit of having a concentration in retail market would be the expression of chain and non-traditional sectors are more of an opportunity for publishers, seeing that retails have expanded the national retail space for books and thus having attracted new customers for books.

In the short run the perfect competition equilibrium can be found by graphing the marginal cost (MC), average total cost (ATC) and marginal revenue (MR) curves. In perfect competition the price is equal to the average revenue, which is equal to the marginal revenue and these are all constant, giving an infinitely elastic demand curve for the firm. The demand curve is “perfectly price elastic” due to the homogeneity of the products supplied, where each supplier, as a price taker, must focus on a single price. Given this, the only choice a supplier has in the short run is how much to produce. For profit maximisation to occur marginal costs (supply curve) must equal marginal revenue (demand curve). Profit maximisation is assumed to mean the maximisation of normal economic profit (i.e. revenue that covers the

2-B&N and the book publishers are changing their business models to deal with the Internet and e-book technology by B&N developing its own e-readable devised called Nook. In order to meet demand and supply, they started to be actively in control of its supply chain by developing,

Like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, has recently launched its own version of a Kindle, called the “Nook.” It is still too early to determine if they will be able to “catch up” with Amazon, and other offerings in the marketplace like IPAD, and the Sony Reader.

The advent of e-books, coupled with the rapid decline in brick-and-mortar bookstores, has left an increasing number of people pondering the possibility of actual physical books going the way of the dinosaur. As an avid audiobook “reader,” I wanted to see for myself whether or not the Digital Revolution has truly swept traditional bookstores aside, leaving publishers trembling in fear. For this reason, I chose the recently-opened Barnes & Noble bookstore at The Fountains at Farrah shopping center the research hub for my observation project.

Furthermore, Barnes & Noble had the power to position their own books in areas of the store with the highest traffic. Electronic publishing was also one of the most salient threats to Random House’s business. Several authors started to self-publish their own manuscripts online avoiding the whole process of bypassing the publishers, distributors and retailers. The emergence of ebooks benefitted both the author and the final consumer. Self-publishing implied a more rapid process for publications and allowed customers to pay lower prices.

The prevalent of e-books creates numerous platforms for the marketplace of books. For example, when Steve Jobs announced the launch of the iPad iBooks, it created an enormous opportunity for publishers.

When is an Amazon a behemoth? From the perspective of absolute profit in the short-term, the decision by Amazon to get into publishing is a good move a sensible business venture. A second question lies just beyond the margin of whether Amazon should go into publishing or not: What impact will print-on-demand have for the publishing industry overall. From the publishers' perspective, print-on-demand solves one problem: No more remainders. Unsold books would not be returned

demand of the product.The Kindle line has shown wild success, Bezos will once again try to

The seller of digital textbooks will also be saving money over producing hard copies. 32% of the cost allocated to paper, printing and editorial can be completely eliminated along with 22.4% of costs related to bookstore operations and personnel. Bookstores as we know them could become obsolete or transformed into stores that sell tablets, e-readers and software packages on campus. Publishers or sellers will now be able to tap into a more global market with electronic textbooks as the information can be translated into many languages quickly.

One of the significant drawbacks of e-books is the issue of compatibility. Various researchers argue that most e-books are not compatible with a variety of software. For instance, a book may be readable on a Kindle device and fail to display its contents in a different device due to compatibility issues. This makes it hard for readers to access all books. It also poses a challenge for readers as all software require a constant update. This is also a major inconvenience for readers as the books they purchase an older version of the software may become obsolete over time, and thus, require them to make a new purchase (Lai and Li 458). Notably, as much as the issue of compatibility describes the disadvantage of using an e-book, it presents a benefit of using the traditional books. This is because the reader will never encounter compatibility issues upon purchasing a hard copy book. Such a book can last for a long