Shatzkin: Why Competing With Amazon Is So Difficult | Digital Book World

Mike Shatzkin: One of the reasons that it's so hard to compete with Amazon is because they've got their fingers in so many pies. They own Diapers.com, so when the' doing a childcare book, the've got access to people in the marketplace through a completely different means than publishers do. They're likely to wake up to these opportunities through books they do themselves. Publishers are now thinking about verticals and when they get into the verticals they think about not just selling content in those verticals but being in business in those verticals and Amazon already is. Understanding the complexity of their businesses gives publishers something when negotiating when working with amazon.