Amazon's main strength right now is that other retailers are kind of dumb.
If they end up trying to push people into becoming KU subscribers, I think that will turn off people that just want to buy a book.
I've been a customer and a Prime customer. In the past, there was little difference. It was great being in Prime because you got free shipping so if you tended to make a lot of purchases, it made sense to join Prime.
But then they added more features to Prime, much of which I don't care about. And there are no levels of Prime, so I can't just subscribe at the free shipping level or something. So now that Prime is more expensive, I'd have to be ordering much more to make it worthwhile.
But I don't. So, I am no longer a Prime member and I purchase less frequently.
And, when I do purchase, I am treated like a second class citizen. Before, whether I was Prime or not, my orders shipped promptly. Right now, I have an order with an expected delivery date of October 3rd to October 5th. I know it's not arriving today because it hasn't even shipped yet.
When I order from other places, they ship it right away. I placed that Amazon order last week and placed an order from a different site the same day. Amazon's fulfillment center is maybe an hour's drive from me. The other site is several states away. I went with the cheapest delivery option. My order from the other site arrived yesterday. My Amazon order still hasn't shipped.
Maybe Amazon wants to weed out the non-Prime buyers. I don't know. But it leaves a huge opening for someone else to step in and take buyers away from Amazon. It could be that it's already happening and Amazon just doesn't realize it yet.
Things are cyclical. I imagine someone will disrupt Amazon just like Amazon disrupted everything else.
