Sent to
digitalrights@amazon.com:
Quote:
Dear Amazon,
I have been buying books through Amazon since the website first opened in 1995, and I have always been impressed with Amazon's forward-looking attitude when it comes to using technology to enable good customer service. I particularly like the "recommendations" features that match purchases with other similar books. I've found a number of "new" authors to read that way. I'd like to make a suggestion that I hope could grow into another Amazon innovation:
When I look at books on your website, I see a link that says "Are you the publisher or author? Learn how Amazon can help you make this book an eBook." However, there are still far too many books for which there is no ebook version available. The titles available through Amazon's Mobipocket (or even other vendors) are only a small fraction of the number of books still in print, and the situation is worse with out of print books. Perhaps the publishers really don't understand yet how huge a market this could be, and how it could extend the "long tail," particularly with older titles that would require further investment to reprint.
I suggest that you also create a button that says, "Click here to notify the publisher and author that you would like to buy this book as an ebook!" The clicks could then be tallied by Amazon, and even displayed on the page. And Amazon could then forward that data to the publishers and authors using an automated system, because Amazon already has publisher and author info on file for each book. (The author correspondence could be sent care of the publisher, which would reduce the amount of address/contact data Amazon would need to maintain.) Publishers might specify the threshold level at which they would like to be notified. This could not only help publishers to understand how large the ebook market is, but could also help to direct their efforts toward the most desired ebooks first.
If/when an ebook version becomes available, the customers who "voted" for it while logged into their Amazon account could be notified via email or notices on their next visit to Amazon. As a special incentive, Amazon could offer discounted retroactive ebook conversion -- if a customer bought a book from Amazon, and it later became available as an ebook, Amazon could offer a discount on the ebook version. This could encourage customers to go ahead and buy a paper version of a book from Amazon while they wait for the ebook version to be produced (and of course, those customers might also sell their used paper copies through Amazon, generating even more revenue).
My storage space for paper books has become limited over the years, and ebook reading technology has improved substantially. I'd really like to be able to buy all my new books in ebook format, and I know I'm not alone. But too few of the titles I want are available. I hope a program like this could help change that.
Best regards,
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I encourage others to do the same. I considered an online petition via one of the websites for that purpose, but I think a swarm of emails to the digitalrights email address will be more effective.