The Kindle is not an e-reader. It's the claim that whoever controls distribution controls the content.

Amazon isn't selling a reading device. It's building a platform where it decides what reaches readers — on the terms it sets.

Amazon launched the Kindle this week — a digital book reader with wireless connectivity, capable of buying and downloading books directly without needing a computer. Coverage is focused on the reading experience, battery life, e-ink readability. But what matters about the Kindle isn't the display technology. It's the distribution model. Amazon isn't selling an e-reader. It's building a platform where it controls the channel between publishers and readers — and charges for it.

The physical book market has a distribution chain with many intermediaries: publisher, distributor, bookstore. None has sufficient market power to dictate terms to the whole. Amazon had already started changing this with online retail — by aggregating enough volume, it became the dominant distribution channel and gained negotiating power that individual bookstores didn't have. The Kindle takes another step: it eliminates the physical bookstore from the chain and makes Amazon the single point of contact between content and reader. A publisher that wants to sell digital books on Kindle has no alternative if it wants to reach Amazon's user base. Amazon will set the terms.

The model being established is the same one Apple is building for software: a centralized distributor controlling access to the end user and taking a cut of every transaction. The difference is that books have a legacy of ownership — you buy a book, it's yours. The Kindle changes this in a way most buyers won't notice: the books you 'buy' on Kindle are licenses that Amazon can revoke, modify or make inaccessible. The market is looking at the screen. The structure being built behind it will matter far more.

Leo Bentier