Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Kindle MatchBook - Not A Wow Factor For Me

Amazon released a new offering called Kindle MatchBook. The idea is that you can get the Kindle eBook edition of a book you already bought in paper form... for a reduced price. From $2.99 down to free you can get the digitized copy.

I am not feeling this at all. First, I am a read once and move on reader. There are so many books, good and bad, and my reading time is not what I would like it to be I don't have the time to re-read something I already read. I want to read new things and expand. There has never been a book that I want to go back and re-experience because I know all the details already.

Second, I am sure the free MatchBook's are not exactly top titles so the reduced price for the paper copy you bought in the past is going up for re-buying the material again. As a Geek and the argument of copyright what are you buying then? The copyrighted material or the media it's on? Because once you bought the book you have the story? $2.99 for an eBook conversion is steep and $14.99 + $2.99 doesn't line up.

The only books I re-read are reference materials, manuals, help books and those I always buy the paper copy for. It's easier to flip through, get to the page I want, see the notes in the margins and I am not anchored to something with a battery. I like eBooks for convenience but what if the power goes out and doesn't come back on? There are some things you need to not have digital.

MatchBook will appeal to the hard core book lovers that love to re-read books. I will not use this not is it a selling point for anything good or bad toward Amazon. In the digital world it's very little work, comparatively speaking to printing, to convert something so why wouldn't you offer something like this?

From a business standpoint it's another revenue stream to eek out another penny or two from older materials. Amazon is in the business of profit, no matter how small the demographic is that will actually use this, it must be projected to be enough to make it worth the effort.

I won't be one of them.

Time to turn the page.

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