Amazon's move to e-content threatens booksellers

Cutthroat price competition keeps driving bookseller after bookseller out of business. But the bigger threat is Amazon's move into digital content delivery.

I'm not too worried about e-books at this point. Amazon's Kindle isn't keeping me awake at night. Apple's Steve Jobs says Kind is dead on arrival because nobody reads anymore. Frankly, I'm more concerned about downloadable audiobooks.

Being able to sell instant downloads of audiobooks for iPod and MP3 player is going to fatten Amazon's profits. Not only does this totally lock out third-party sellers, it even cuts out book printers and distributors, the whole industry supply chain! All Amazon needs to do is add a few bits to its computer.

On Thursday Amazon said that it had agreed to buy Audible, the Web’s largest provider of downloadable audiobooks, for $300 million. Amazon isn’t saying much about what it will do with the company, but bringing audiobooks directly to its Web site and to the Kindle is the obvious first step.

I'm not a computer geek by any stretch of the imagination, but I bought an MP3 player about a year ago and have worn out three sets of headphones since. I've been really surprised with the quality of the audiobook experience -- I don't know whether it's my imagination or not, but I seem to absorb more of a book's content when I'm listening to a good reader.

Someday soon, everyone is going to have a cellphone with the same capability of these MP3 player.