The also boughts were one of the major innovations that allowed Amazon to dominate the ebook space. Getting rid of them is one of those head-scratchingly stupid moves that makes me think that now is a good time to buy Barnes & Noble stock.
I've seen a lot of red flags with Amazon recently. I just went through a months-long customer service nightmare where emailing jeff@amazon.com did f*ck all to resolve anything. Perhaps I should start a new thread about that. In any case, there are other issues with the company: Bezos's divorce, censorship scandals, random ebooks and audiobooks disappearing from customers' libraries, all sorts of problems with the Createspace migration, and the fact that AWS is basically propping up the entire company.
In the next five years, it wouldn't surprise me if Amazon spins off or sells KDP. Even if it doesn't, I believe that it's going to exist in a very different (and probably much diminished) form by that time. Getting rid of the also boughts is just another way they're shooting themselves in the foot.
Is there ever a good time to buy Barnes and Noble stock?
The sad thing is that I don't think Amazon is trying to get rid of or diminish KDP. There's not a whole lot of love between Amazon and large trad publishers. Part of the reason KDP exists in the first place is to give Amazon an alternate content stream. And that part's worked if Data Guy is to be believed. The last available figures (admittedly dated now) indicate that a majority of sales in romance, science fiction, and fantasy ebooks are indie sales. DG's recent presentation at the Nebulas, which you can see referenced in one of the other threads, provides more recent data that show that science and fantasy at least are still indie-dominated. That's a lot of book sales. And as long as Amazon wants to keep KU, it has to keep KDP, because most of the trads still haven't bought into the KU model.
None of that means, however, that Amazon won't kill the whole thing off through poor decision-making. And now that books are only a small part of Amazon's business, I think it's possible that if KDP becomes too much of a nuisance (scammers, scandals, etc.) that Amazon
might wash its hands of it. An announcement that KU is being phased out would be the first indicator that something like that is becoming more likely.
It's also not impossible that, if the US ever decides to actually enforce antitrust laws, Amazon could get broken up, though that would involve way more than KU. I could see a situation in which Amazon.com (just the storefront) is one company, and each product or service line becomes another company. For instance, Amazon Studios would be completely separate. The Amazon imprints would be spun into a different company, with KDP maybe being separate or being part of that publishing company. In the latter case, there'd probably end up being more gatekeeping. Amazon Web Services, Amazon Restaurant Services, Amazon Home Services, AmazonFresh, etc. might each be a separate company. Of course, there are many other possible patterns.
I checked my Also Boughts again this morning, and they're still there. I think Amazon would (stupidly) like to get rid of them, but I believe the data they're gathering keeps telling them that would be a bad idea.