Slashdot Mirror
Kindle Pricing, Business Models and Source Code
narramissic writes "A trifecta of Kindle-related news surfaced this week, with Jeff Bezos speaking at Wired's 'Disruptive by Design' conference on topics including Kindle pricing and business models. And yesterday, reports blogger Peter Smith, 'there was a flurry of blogging activity yesterday stating that Amazon had released the Kindle source code. Once everyone caught their breath, it became apparent that the files in question were just some open source libraries that Amazon had modified (they're being good open source citizens and releasing mods they've made to open source code — good for them!), not the complete source code.' Now, back to the Kindle pricing: According to a post at Wired, Bezos said Amazon opted to sell the Kindle for 'something akin to the actual cost for hardware,' rather than subsidizing the hardware costs and requiring a monthly subscription or requiring the buyer to purchase a certain number of books per month because 'fees and minimum purchase requirements create friction.' Smith has a different take: 'If I'm buying a Kindle from Amazon that enables me to buy books from Amazon, I'm broadcasting a desire to buy Kindle books. I would welcome some subsidization of the hardware since I'm going to be buying content anyway. No, I really think Amazon priced the Kindle the way they did because they thought they could get away with doing so (and they were right, it would seem).' Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Bezos said 'that he sees Kindle-the-device and Kindle-the-book-format as two separate business models, and that the Kindle iPhone App won't be the last software reader to appear.'"
I noticed the Slashdot plug on the Kindle website - LOL.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Rupert Murdoch has apparently been watching the Kindle closely and has been planning on coming-out with his own version to give away to subscribers of his newspapers. Perhaps Bezos really did have the timing right with the Kindle and it just MAY unseat a large portion of the print periodical industry. Should be interesting to watch, no matter how it works itself out.
put the what in the where?
Of course Amazon is going to claim the best personal book-reader and business model. But they make even more money if they support other readers, which they have done with iPhone. And that wont be the last. I wonder when someone will break their DRM?
(they're being good open source citizens and releasing mods they've made to open source code -- good for them!)
It's not really about citizenship. It's about not being sued. In organizations I've worked in, engineers have so much to do that tasks they consider low-priority (like reviewing product documentation, and releasing modifications to open source products) tend to fall through the cracks. As a tech writer, it's part of my job to be an asshole about getting developers to review what I write. Same goes for our lawyers: they have to be assholes about getting developers to comply with legal stuff, including the open source releases.
there's more than one "Kindle-the-book-format", though. There's the regular Kindle file, azw, and there's one they call the "Topaz" format (azw1), and it sucks. I love Vernor Vinge, and unfortunately, lots of his stuff is in topaz format on the Kindle.
Huge numbers of artifacts - lines printed over other lines, skipped lines, and sometimes the first word of a sentence has huge amounts of whitespace between the first and second letter.
Other than that, love my Kindle.
trollmod for devils advocate against amazon, but what the hey..
'good job' is a qualifier to which i object.
this is the same company violently trying to patent 1click...they released the source code because the community has an established habit of targeting offenders and demanding compliance and cash.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"If I'm buying a Kindle from Amazon that enables me to buy books from Amazon, I'm broadcasting a desire to buy Kindle books. I would welcome some subsidization of the hardware since I'm going to be buying content anyway. No, I really think Amazon priced the Kindle the way they did because they thought they could get away with doing so..."
Why is it only in the tech-gadget industry that people expect manufacturers to sell items for *less than cost*?
98% of books and 99.9% of magazines I never re-read. I'd prefer a library model, say $1 a day to read a book, then I could stop access and paying for it. The main exception would be course-texts.
I have a hard time with the buzz on Amazon's device.
Right now, their stock is trading at an astronomical P/E ratio.
Their balance sheet has an equally astronomical Goodwill valuation.
Does someone follow the corporation's reporting enough to publish some facts regarding how much this device contributes to their bottom line?
If this were a big win for Amazon, it would show up in their numbers.
Now, how many of you *actually* stuff another device in your laptop bag to read books?
Or, maybe it will be like the days when Apple introduced the ipod and many on /. said it was doomed, only with Amazon the expectations are backwards.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
OTOH, the Kindle may be subsidized because of the user does not pay for the wireless plan, Amazon does. Since we do not know the details, it may be that Amazon is not incurring any additional costs, but I suspect that Amazon does pay some amount per unit per month even if no books are downloaded.
To me the kindle pricing makes good sense, if Amazon can maintain it, and if the web browser and functionality improves. It is not worth that much if all I can buy books to read from Amazon. It becomes worth something when I can download books from anywhere, and whan I can read online magazines that do not require subscriptions, or are not available through Amazon, for instance make or circuit cellar. The problem is that if I am browsing without Amazon subscription, I am using billable bandwidth, but not paying for it. If I can do this, then Kindle is a great deal. A year of browsing for $500 is much less than a netbook and wireless subscription would costs. Of course this may be why the web browser in not a major feature in Kindle.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Bezos said 'that he sees Kindle-the-device and Kindle-the-book-format as two separate business models
What's next? Kindle the Lunchbox? Kindle the Flamethrower?
As TFA states, it sounds like Amazon is charging full price for the hardware just because they can. Welcome to the Quest For More Money!
coding is life
The thing that stops me taking the Kindle is the huge upfront cost. I can buy 200 books for the price of one Kindle. Obviously, the Kindle has all sorts of advantages over regular books, but it's quite a steep cost.
I think Amazon should subsidise the books. Make the Kindle come with, say, $200 worth of vouchers redeemable in the Amazon store. Make it $100 worth of general vouchers and $100 worth of 2-for-1 deals. Anything to cut the apparent cost of the hardware.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
While I'm a huge fan of free stuff, I would like to point out that they still have to pay the authors and publishers for use of the copyrighted material.
They do subsidize the books (if by subsidize you mean "sell for less than hardcopy"). I just bought Outliers for Kindle for $9.99; hardcopy is $14.83 from Amazon, or $18.19 from B&N.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost to the publisher. To Amazon, who has to pay the publisher a royalty fee for every sale, digital content has a very real, per unit cost that they cannot go below. Just like the television and film industries learned very little about digital content from the music industry, so it would seem that the publishing industry has also chosen to ignore the lessons learned by those who have gone before them. The transition to digital print is going to be every bit as painful as it was for movies and music, and it's going to take several years of publishers taking their lumps before they finally come to grips with a pricing model that actually works for most of their customers.
That's not a subsidy. They can't sell digital copies for the same amount as hard copies because their customers know that it costs them significantly less money to produce. They're still selling both the hardware and content at a profit. A subsidy is when you use profits from one product to offset selling another product for a loss (eg Sony sells the PS3 at a loss but makes it up by charging a $10 royalty on every PS3 game made, even if they had no hand in the development/production/distribution of the game).
Kindle-the-device is definitely a cool devise that I would love to have. However, Kindle-the-book-format is the same DRM crap that all the online music sores tried to shove down our throat. I'm not going to start buying books that can only be used on approved hardware. As soon as they remove that restriction sign me up ill take five.
I have a Kindle. I love it. But I'm not buying books from the Kindle store for my Kindle, because they're DRM-encrusted. I'm buying my ebooks from another legitimate source which sells them to me in formats I can convert, and I convert them into Mobi and put them on my Kindle using Calibre.
So, buying a Kindle does not automatically signal a desire to buy Kindle books. Some of us just like the hardware.
What do you think a subsidized e-book would go for? -$5.00 perhaps? :-)
I'm partly serious. There are still production (scanning, proofing, formatting) and distribution (whispernet) costs even though they're smaller than with hardcopy, and royalties which are unchanged.
Well, your statement is a little off. Sony has had a hand in every title made for the PS3, they made the dev tools and hardware. That $10 royalty if for establishing the platform, etc. Mod me down if you find me pedantic.
In a semi-related note The new Ghostbusters game is $59.99 PS3/360 and $29.99 PC
W.............T..............F
Good-bye
First: the DRM has been broken - AZW is the Mobipocket file-format with just one byte changed so a Mobipocket reader software won't accept it. So to break Amazons DRM google for "MobiDeDRM" and "Kindle Mobipocket conversion" - it will be the #1 hit ;-).
Now having said that you might notice something: Mobipocket has free to download readers for just about 12 different devices. So if Amazon wanted what you suggest all they had to to is not change that one byte. So in changing that one byte it is a clear signal that that they want there books to be read on Kindle and Kindle alone. And iPhone is just a special exception.
Before you wonder: Amazon owns Mobipocket [1] - so no they won't change there reader to accept Kindle books. In fact Mobipocket has stopped producing new reader software all together.
It is not difficult see the evil masterplan behind: The typical Embrace, Extend, Extinguish plan which is now in the last phase: Mobipocket to be extinguished by not creating new software for todays devices. Amazon even got as far as stopping the finished Mobipocktet iPhone reader. And last not least: not licensing the Mobipocket file format to Sony.
For those who own Mobipocket books - ahh sorry mate you loose. Only by now Amazon has pissed of European customers [2] big time. After all we can't buy Kindle and feel the Mobipocket demise double. And we found out about Sony.
Martin
[1] http://www.mobipocket.com/
[2] http://www.mobipocket.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15520
As I said one post above: Done already.
I beg to disagree here
1) Amazon owns Mobipocket [1].
2) Over time Mobipocket has developed software readers for 12 devices [2].
3) The AZW book format - including DRM - is identical with Mobipocket save one byte [3].
So if Amazon wanted more software readers one call at Mobipocket and a week later they would have some. Which is probably the way they got the iPhone reader: http://www.teleread.org/2008/12/04/is-amazon-sitting-on-the-mobipocket-iphone-client-after-all/
Martin
[1] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3833
[2] http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp
[3] http://igorsk.blogspot.com/2007/12/mobipocket-books-on-kindle.html
200 books?
Where do you find new books for $2 each?
If you notice, though, newer books with paperback editions, typically the Kindle version is $9.99 and the paperback less.
You have to get to much older books for Kindle prices to be lower than paperback prices, and even with old sci-fi novels, its typically 5% less.
Main reason I became a Mobipocket user was the Symbian OS reader. Or where else do you fund Dune which weights less then 200g.
The problem for amazon with a subsidized kindle is that it would have created an immediate demand for some other publisher to provide discounted books for use on the kindle. Amazon would therefore have to respond by clamping down on what the kindle can view/read to recoup their investment.
Besides, it's going to be expensive either way and people would feel angry if they paid alot for an e-book reader and the books were priced higher than they are now.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
That is just not true. Amazon guarantees that the Kindle price will always be less than the dead tree edition. I've never seen the kindle edition of a book which has begun selling trade paperbacks be $9.99. Occasionally the price at Borders or Barnes & Noble will be cheaper because they have the hardcover on sale for 40% off, and the Kindle price is only 30% off the listed hardcover price, though if you can wait a week or two for new releases the price goes down from the price on the release date.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
As long as you are willing to cut the creator out. What, do you think creating books is simple and easy, so easy anyone can do it? Well, I guess anyone could if they wanted - but the result of 99% of the population is unreadable drivel. Read many blogs lately?
Either the creativity and effort is worth something or it isn't. If it isn't, then everything digital should be free and we are stuck with whatever slime oozes forth. Because nobody is going to put forth the effort to produce quality books. Books, yes. Quality books, no.
I'd be reluctant to accept one for free. I don't like either Kindle, or any other DRM supporting reader. I'm quite dubious about the very concept, but not really opposed, to electronic readers. I'm oppose to DRM enabling readers. Including the Kindle.
Five years from now, when you need a new machine, you'll understand why. EVERYTHING you've bought will need to be replaced, and part of it won't be available any longer. (Replaced doesn't necessarily mean repurchased...but it can. That depends on vendor choice, not yours.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost to the publisher.
You're absolutely right. The book is just magically fully edited, formatted, and presented to the publisher from the author. Nope, no need to have the publisher involved at all........
Yes interesting especially when one considers that Amazon owns Mobipocket and Mobipocket has all those readers already:
http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/default.asp
And one considers that AZW and MOBI are almost identical. So if that is what they want - why fork the file format in the first place?
They can't sell digital copies for the same amount as hard copies because their customers know that it costs them significantly less money to produce.
Where do people keep getting this idea? I can produce a 100-page book for about $2. If I were going to print 100,000 of them it would be more like $0.50 each. The shipping costs per book are extremely low. You might be able to convince me that the total cost for printing and shipping any mass-market book is $1. Maybe.
No way is it much more than that, because if it was I would be in the book business. When I can independently produce a book for $2 in small quantities I have to think that either I am the greatest genius ever to walk the face of the Earth, or maybe the book publishers know what they are doing and it is really, really cheap to print books.
What you are paying for in a book is the content, not the book. I assure you my book that sells fo $50 didn't cost $10 to print. Or even $5. Or likely even $2 even though they made only around 2500 of them. The Kindle edition is a little less than $40. The $10 discount has nothing whatsoever to do with the cost of printing and shipping the book.
As a Mobipocket Customer I noticed a little more then 5 week ago. There is no reader for the Nokia 5800, the iPhone and whatever else there are in the way of new devices. At first I was surprised - they have to with the times, don't they.
But then I found out that Mobipocket was bought by Amazon and Amazon wants to phase Mobipocket out. You will find several rants from here here in thread if you are interested in details.
Anyway I was suddenly aware that I won't be able to read my eBooks on the next device which did two things:
1) I informed myself about removing DRM - It is possible and I live in a country where it is legal.
2) I don't want to buy any DRM infected books any more.
Well done Amazon.
Martin
And in a few months, Outliers will go to paperback, where it will be cheaper than $9.99, and the used copies of the paperback will be around $4. Kindle prices are only good on books currently still in hardcover only. For anything else, a used paperback is almost always cheaper.
I buy books frequently (several per month), and generally stick to used paperbacks. I tend to sell the books I don't care for, and keep the ones that I will refer back to (I don't read fiction, so books have repeat value for me). I would argue that the "subsidy" you point to is no subsidy at all. I'm still significantly better off buying dead tree books rather than a Kindle version.
I do have a Sony Reader that I use to read out of copyright books and chose it because Kindle can't handle PDF well. I'm not averse to eBooks as some are. Just waiting for it to actually make financial sense.
Why does slashdot continue to promote the idea that "digital content has no intrinsic cost"? It does have intrinsic cost, a lot of intrinsic cost, that people on slashdot for some reason seam to forget to mention.
Let me count the costs of intrinsic to just the one copy of the file.
1. You have to have a server to house it on, even if there is just one copy, without the hardware you have no file, therefore it is intrinsic to the file.
2. You have to have people manage that hardware and keep it running, unlike a book that you can leave on a shelf a digital copy that is able to be distributed must be maintained.
3. Regular backups to recover possible data loss and the hardware(tape drives, flash drives, however else you wanna back it up)
4. Electricity
5. Internet Connection
These costs don't go away once the book is delivered, the publisher/distributer must maintain these costs for as long as they wish to offer this book, increasing the costs.
The first book you put online has a huge cost, with every book you add after the first it gets cheaper, to a point. Unlike physical inventory which you can liquidate, your digital library must be constantly maintained. So, yes, distribution of the item over the internet is cheap (once again not free); however running the data center that houses the digital media is more expensive than a warehouse of books.
Someone really needs to compare the cost of over time of one book from the time it reaches the publisher to the time it reaches the consumer. I have a hunch that the cost of the digitally distributed book will have the higher cost. The costs just scale better digitally.
But you have to factor in the fact that you can't resell the book you finished reading, donate it to the library, or give it to a friend. The publisher knows that they won't be losing a new sale due to the used market, or gifting.
I don't know much about the book business, but aren't there complications on the physical side of books? You have to commit to a certain print amount. You then have to figure out how many books to send out to each store. And any copies that aren't sold, I think the book store is entitled to resell back to the published at whatever cost they paid. This complicates their business, adds personnel that have to figure out these figures and manage the operations, etc. Digital publishing frees them up from many of these commitments and complications. And besides, they probably create the book in digital form to begin with. Digitizing it into whichever DRM format a specific reader uses can probably be done in minutes. Add to that a day or two for proofreading and fixing.
Having to shell out $350 and then save $2 over a paperback is somewhat discouraging. But perhaps that is just what you pay for being an early adopter.
Yeah, just did some research: http://www.lulu.com/ I can publish a hardbound book for $26. To publish digitally it would cost me at least $60 a month just for my internet connection.
And I realize I'm ignoring economies of scale. At some point it does become cheaper to publish digitally, but at no point does cheaper = free.
Digital content has no intrinsic cost, so it's not much of a subsidy on their behalf.
I don't the think the publishers are just going to give their content to Amazon for free, even if Amazon gives it away free.
--Bruce
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
The Sony is a nice reader, but the software you have to use to load it is one of the most unstable pieces of crap I've ever had the misfortune of using.
Why am I not surprised! If Sony (and it's subsidiaries) does not learn there lesson in software quality soon I see no hope...
Martin
But that's so unfair!
Like Kodak did for their inkjet printers and ink.
Very much unlike what Apple and AT&T do for the iPhone.
Add me to the list of people who prefer this model of honesty.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Meanwhile, over at the New York Times, Bezos said 'that he sees Kindle-the-device and Kindle-the-book-format as two separate business models, and that the Kindle iPhone App won't be the last software reader to appear.'
Does Jeff Bezos really talk of himself in the third person? Surely the "he" in that quote isn't the aforementioned blogger Peter Smith.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If you aren't, you don't know shit . So just STFU.
Nonesense. It has a very low marginal cost.
You have not been charged for this economics lesson.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Would you buy an Apple iTablet if Kindle prices were cut in half on the day of its launch? Even at an guesstimated $200 price premium over the Kindle, the iTablet has been called the Kindle Killer - not that Amazon should mind since they could just be selling Kindle books to iTablet early adopters for the same profit. But with free Whispernet to d/l a lot of free and other subscription content, as a reader Kindle is fairly priced at the moment. Just wish I could afford it to read my own Kindle books on.
:^)
And keep in mind that the books Amazon sells on Kindle constrain them in pricing since Amazon - unlike other eBook sellers (*cough* *cough* Fictionwise) -- isn't screwing over the authors when they discount their prices from list. Those discounts come out of Amazon's percentage. As such, it would be hard for them to subsidize the hardware as well in this business model.
Remember when you price your cost of your iTablet to add in the cost of nationwide connectivity as well. And that Kindle has better battery life by far and may also get new functionality improvements in the future. Consider than and then it may not compare nearly as favorably for many people who don't need yet another thicker, heavier, computer.
Now when is the next Oprah show when she'll be giving DX's away to the entire audience with her favorite books already loaded on it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And in a few months, Outliers will go to paperback, where it will be cheaper than $9.99, and the used copies of the paperback will be around $4. Kindle prices are only good on books currently still in hardcover only. For anything else, a used paperback is almost always cheaper.
I buy books frequently (several per month), and generally stick to used paperbacks. I tend to sell the books I don't care for, and keep the ones that I will refer back to (I don't read fiction, so books have repeat value for me). I would argue that the "subsidy" you point to is no subsidy at all. I'm still significantly better off buying dead tree books rather than a Kindle version.
I do have a Sony Reader that I use to read out of copyright books and chose it because Kindle can't handle PDF well. I'm not averse to eBooks as some are. Just waiting for it to actually make financial sense.
You will still have to go to a bookstore that has outliers in stock to get it. If you happen to be at the airport, or a hotel, or the DMV, you can't get it without a Kindle. The Kindle is also useful for more than just books. If I buy a newspaper on Kindle, I can store it on Amazon's server (if you think Amazon is going out of business anytime in the relevant future I advise you to take off the tinfoil hat) and get to it in under a minute when turn my wireless back on, rather than filling my apartment with boxes or hiring a storage space just for news (yes, some of us have a very real need to reference historical financial data).
I have personal property insurance, so if my house burns down, I don't have to have a list of every book I've ever bought because when I get my replacement Kindle, all of my purchased books will still be available.
If I want a friend to borrow a book that I've purchased, I log out of my kindle, log in to his Kindle, and he can view my entire library. If I don't trust him to log out when I next need to use my Kindle, he isn't a friend. If I lend him a dead tree book, I also don't have access to it, so its a wash on availability.
Yes, you can't sell ebooks. Due to the format, this actually makes sense, because you paying for the service, not the product. You can't change the size of the text in your dead tree book. You can't erase notes and write new ones in your dead tree book. You can't get free wireless text internet in your dead tree book. You can't read samples of books that a bookstore doesn't carry or have in stock.
My Kindle 2 has no problem with PDFs, because I use my laptop for them. I'm guessing if you didnt have a Sony reader you probably would too.
The difference that makes Kindle distinguishable from your example is that Amazon doesn't manufacture the blades. They are reselling other author's works and need to pay those authors a fair price. This is a significantly different business model from Gillette.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
While I'm a huge fan of free stuff, I would like to point out that they still have to pay the authors and publishers for use of the copyrighted material.
That doesn't stop Amazon from negotiating with publishers of e-books for a discount. I'm pretty sure that the contract between the publishers and most authors includes a bunch of freebies for promotional use. As it is in the interest of the e-book publishers as much, if not more, than the interest of Amazon for kindle to take off, it's quite plausible that publishers would participate in such a promotion.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The trick here is for eBooks to be priced so cheaply that they're competitive with your desired rental model. How much does an eBook cost and how long does it take you to read it? The rule of thumb in video games is that a $60 game should give you 60 hours of playing (and replaying) enjoyment. At $1/hour that's a better bargain than a movie theater, and Netflix is a better bargain than that.
Unless you're a really fast reader who would spend more than $30/month on his books, eBooks are already competitive with your $1/day rental model.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yep - you are probably right - that is most likely the plan.
Of course there is a flaw in that plan: Kindle (reader and books) is not available here is Europe. So we will stop using Mobipocket but we can't go for Kindle either.
But the Sony reader (not that I have much love to Sony) and with the ePub file format is available in all mayor book stores. High visibility.
You've got it wrong. With the Kindle reader s/w available on other platforms for free -- starting with 17M iPhone/iPod Touches, you don't even need the Kindle h/w to read Kindle books. Buy it if you want the screen, storage, and Whispernet connectivity. Use your other smartphone/laptop otherwise. Either way Amazon has you covered.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Wrong. It has a high marginal cost in terms of its royalties to the publisher/author for each unit sold. In terms of costs the highest cost is the royalty back to the publisher. The next highest cost (percentage of the selling price) is Amazon's profit. The lowest cost is for storage and delivery that does not involve physical inventory or shipping charges beyond the wireless costs.
You get what you pay for.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Then buy them directly from eXcessica Publishing and other publishers who offer their titles on their own sites across a variety of standard and open formats.
NSFW Warning: eXcessica Publishing sells adult titles for mature readers.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Since I bought my Kindle 2 a few months ago, I have purchased, from Amazon, well over 200 books for a grand total less than $10. Your move.
I've been reading ebooks for years on various devices. None of them will do what I really want, though.
My feature list:
Work on a device I'm carrying anyway like an iPhone, SmartPhone, or Blackberry
Support multiple formats
(Here's the big one) Let me switch from text reading to audio (text to speech) AND BACK as desired
Support bluetooth to stream the audio to external speakers like in my car
Have a back lit screen for reading in the dark (like on any phone, but not Kindle)
The Kindle is close and if the iPhone version will eventually support the text to speech option (it doesn't right now) then I will pay whatever they want.
That is just not true. Amazon guarantees that the Kindle price will always be less than the dead tree edition.
Hmmm... as much as I love my Kindle, I have to disagree here. Or at least, if they guarantee this, they need to take care of a couple of titles. I'm not going to count this one because the paperback's not out yet.
I couldn't find any with an actual released paperback that costs less than the Kindle edition, but found several where the price was the same.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Digital content has no intrinsic cost to the publisher.
You're absolutely right. The book is just magically fully edited, formatted, and presented to the publisher from the author. Nope, no need to have the publisher involved at all........
I think he should have said "no intrinsic marginal cost."
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Especially when you consider that unlike the Music industry (and to a lesser extent the Movie industry) as books get older they do drop in price at retail. So they are passing on the margin increase resulting from the recouping of initial outlay.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
The biggest reason they didn't mention for pricing the Kindle at cost rather than subsidizing and requiring a subscription is that you capture a lot more gift sales that way. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I'm reluctant to ever buy someone a gift that requires a recurring fee (unless I'm going to pay that, too). And then there's the fact that I never would have bought myself a Kindle, because I just didn't think I had any desire to read books digitally. But I got one as a gift, and now I really adore it. I'm at least one customer (who has bought several books from the Kindle store) that they wouldn't have at all if they'd gone with a cell-phone-style pricing plan.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Look at the "List Price" for those books and you'll see they technically don't violate their guarantee.
Does it have the 750,000 titles available through Kindle?
Well, sure, the Kindle edition is less than "list price," but ALL Amazon's books are. If they themselves are selling the paper book for the same price, that doesn't seem quite cricket.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?