Let’s take a look at eight proximate causes for the industry’s troubles—keeping in mind that final cause is simply technological change.
1. Amazon
It’s odd to recall that Amazon’s initial benefit to its users was that it offered rare and hard-to-find books. In the early days it sold backlist titles, i.e. those still in print but not being actively shopped to stores. Such books were not in a high enough demand to make it profitable for individual bookstores to stock them and sell them regionally. But when the market share expanded to the entire country, suddenly this list of unloved books became profitable, and Amazon did readers a service by providing them at discount prices.
But things have changed. Today, the ills of Amazon are the ills of all large-scale software-as-service products in general. In its infancy such a company’s aim is to acquire as many users as possible. In its youth its aim is to continue doing this while beginning to turn a profit. In its maturity its aim is to prevent its customers from leaving, squeeze as much profit from them as possible, and cut out as many of the middle-men (i.e. vendors) as possible.
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