Amazon giving away Kindles?

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Argel

I love Prime! Now I hardly ever have to get out of my chair for anything except calls of nature and signing for deliveries.

Maybe you need one of these?

http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/02/1...r-not-a-chair/

BOb

[Daithi]

Apparently news outlets having been asking Amazon if they will in fact provide free Kindle's to Amazon Prime customers. Amazon's response: "We don't comment on rumors or speculation."

[djgreedo]

It makes sense if you assume that shipping is a huge problem for Amazon in terms of cost, barriers to sales, and logistics.

Giving away a Kindle solves the problem that Prime is designed to fix - eliminating the inconvenience and cost of shipping to Amazon and the customer by encouraging ebook sales over paper book sales.

I could be mistaken about Amazon's business model, but it makes sense.

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Apparently news outlets having been asking Amazon if they will in fact provide free Kindle's to Amazon Prime customers. Amazon's response: "We don't comment on rumors or speculation."

They should have said 'we don't believe anyone reads anymore'.

[Boston]

I anticipated some move to make the Kindle affordable to the masses although I expected it to be more in the form of a discount on future ebook purchases. This would be even better.

Given the agency model takes away ebook pricing as a competitive advantagem it only makes sense to me that Amazon would do some type of deep discounting with the Kindle to lock more consumers into the Kindle store. Since they no longer need to take a loss on ebooks, why not make the device inexpensive/free to own?

Smart move.

[Connallmac]

Originally Posted by Boston

I anticipated some move to make the Kindle affordable to the masses although I expected it to be more in the form of a discount on future ebook purchases. This would be even better.

Given the agency model takes away ebook pricing as a competitive advantagem it only makes sense to me that Amazon would do some type of deep discounting with the Kindle to lock more consumers into the Kindle store. Since they no longer need to take a loss on ebooks, why not make the device inexpensive/free to own?

Smart move.

Especially considering their willingness to play the long game. That is one of the things that impresses me about Amazon and Jeff Bezos. In a corporate world that seems to be entirely focused on that particular quarter's bottom line, he seems very willing to think in the long term.

[DawnFalcon]

Well; We know PVI has secured a mass-production deal for e-ink screens as of last October. It perhaps makes sense that Amazon, one of their big customers has secured a nice volume order discount and would perhaps chose to use it in this way rather than slashing the public price of the Kindle before the competition, to avoid a price war on reader costs for as long as they can.

Just speculating.

[Boston]

I overlooked one other Amazon benefit...getting more customers hooked into Prime membership (with hopes they stay with it).
Smart move just turned brilliant imo.

[Davwein]

You can put epub on Kindle (at least I do it alot with PC-Kindle). Get the Calibre converter - it will convert most formats to Kindle - or anything else.
see http://calibre-ebook.com/download_windows

[brecklundin]

been a prime member for years, easily beats a Costco membership. I can always go to Costco, except on the electronics return options at Costco. I love the Prime service because our orders get kicked to the top of the list and we get stuff two days after it's ordered. And now our orders are even processed on Saturday's so an item ordered with 1-day delivery on Friday or early enough on Saturday will get here on Monday. That last part is new. I can even get Sunday delivery for $16 if it's something I need right away. The advantage of Prime over standard free 2-day delievery is Prime orders go to the front of the queue. But what happens when everyone is on Priime? Eventually there has to be a point where this becomes an issue though for now it's apparently not an issue.

The fuel I save alone, is enough to cover the membership a dozen times over. But we live a minimum 60mi round-trip from most civilized shopping options.

Amazon could give us another Kindle and make more cash from us, even if I gave the reader away. It's not much of a stretch to see them give one away because they gave me $100 discount just for opening a new Audible account so my new K2i was only $159, which is probably about the break even point on the reader right now, though it is likely a fair bit less for the hardware alone. I think I was even eligible for the 30-day guarantee and keep the Kindle if ya don't like it, deal, but i am not sure...

Honestly I could see a program where people pay $129 for a year of Prime and get a free Kindle. I think that's a reasonable option so many who really do not want or need another reader can just renew their Prime membership for $79 and those who want the "Bundle of Prime Kindling" can grab it for just a bit more. I could see families adding another Kindle this way as well. I feel price is the real roadblock for many families buying more than a single K2...I mean it's over $1000 for a family of four to have readers, that is a big problem to adoption of the device as something pretty ubiquitous in the household. Plus Amazon will make more revenue from cases, covers or whatever for every Kindle in circulation.

It is going to be really hard on the small brands, in the US, Canada & UK at least as i suspect those are the markets this would appear in first. But the other brands are gonna have problems gaining a foothold because no chance they can compete on price.

Gonna be interesting for sure.

[brecklundin]

Originally Posted by Connallmac

Especially considering their willingness to play the long game. That is one of the things that impresses me about Amazon and Jeff Bezos. In a corporate world that seems to be entirely focused on that particular quarter's bottom line, he seems very willing to think in the long term.

BINGO...that has been Amazon's advantage for years...they have long term goals over bowing to the almighty & insidious quarterly-report mentality from the cookie-cutter CEO/Execs out there today.

Google is the same sort of company, long plans and patience yet allowing for adapting to small changes in the market now and then.

[brecklundin]

*** posted in wrong thread...d'oh!! ***

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by Davwein

You can put epub on Kindle (at least I do it alot with PC-Kindle). Get the Calibre converter...

That's not "putting epub on Kindle", it's "converting the books to MOBI format, which the Kindle can read, and putting that on the Kindle".

And you can't do it without stripping DRM, which is legally problematical in many countries.

[Kanlee]

I have been an Amazon prime member for about three years and just bought my wife a kindle on my account,but I guess this would make up my mind for me about which to get for myself if they did it.To bad we don't read the same kinds of books.

[pboss]

It looks like another sneaky move from Amazon that's going to piss off a few people but make the rest happy. They have all the marketing intelligence by now to make this move without taking any risk. They are securing long term profit on a lower margin.