MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Lower Kindle cost thru cell phone adoption model

catsittingstill · 03-03-2009, 09:57 PM

Regarding subscription deals and similar things,

There's this idea running around that the cost of the reader should be subsidized by Amazon, who will then make up the difference by charging extra for the e-books. I think this is a terrible idea.

For starters, if the e-books have to pay for the reader, you can expect overpriced e-books DRM'd up the wazoo, and a Kindle that can't display e-books from anywhere but Amazon. Otherwise people take the "free" reader and read cheap or free e-books on it, and the Kindle goes out of business.

I don't like the idea of the "monthly fee for all you can read" model either. If I wanted to pay monthly fees to ransom my reader, I'd have bought an iPhone.

And the "buy 20 books and it's free" model suggested above--well, to pay for a 360$ reader they'll be, um, 18$ each, supposing the books themselves are, say, Project Gutenberg books that cost Amazon nothing. I'm not enthused about paying 18$ each for Project Gutenberg books that other people can read for free.

I'd much rather do it this way: pay up front for the reader and the all-you-can-read web access, and then buy books wherever I like (that has DRM-free Mobi) or download them for free if they're in the public domain. That's just the model I'm comfortable with: I'd rather pay more now and save money down the road, and buying a pig-in-a-poke (like something that has to be ransomed with monthly fees) makes me very uncomfortable. Plus I read a lot, so I like the books to be cheap.

03-03-2009, 09:57 PM	#10
catsittingstill Guru Posts: 643 Karma: 551634 Join Date: Dec 2007 Device: Kindle 1.0.8, iPod Touch, Kindle Keyboard	Regarding subscription deals and similar things, There's this idea running around that the cost of the reader should be subsidized by Amazon, who will then make up the difference by charging extra for the e-books. I think this is a terrible idea. For starters, if the e-books have to pay for the reader, you can expect overpriced e-books DRM'd up the wazoo, and a Kindle that can't display e-books from anywhere but Amazon. Otherwise people take the "free" reader and read cheap or free e-books on it, and the Kindle goes out of business. I don't like the idea of the "monthly fee for all you can read" model either. If I wanted to pay monthly fees to ransom my reader, I'd have bought an iPhone. And the "buy 20 books and it's free" model suggested above--well, to pay for a 360$ reader they'll be, um, 18$ each, supposing the books themselves are, say, Project Gutenberg books that cost Amazon nothing. I'm not enthused about paying 18$ each for Project Gutenberg books that other people can read for free. I'd much rather do it this way: pay up front for the reader and the all-you-can-read web access, and then buy books wherever I like (that has DRM-free Mobi) or download them for free if they're in the public domain. That's just the model I'm comfortable with: I'd rather pay more now and save money down the road, and buying a pig-in-a-poke (like something that has to be ransomed with monthly fees) makes me very uncomfortable. Plus I read a lot, so I like the books to be cheap.