Not really 'for sale'

After much thought I've come to the conclusion that there really are no kindle books for sale.

You cannot buy any of the 240,000 books available for the kindle.

What you can do, is semi-permanently rent a book for a single set price. I say semi-permanently because you really only get it for as long as Amazon is in business and willing to support the legacy file formats. When Amazon abandons the current format you'll loose your books.

They would only be following in Microsoft's footsteps.

I thought this was a great revelation until I went to clip the image for this post. Go read the text, "Choose from 240,000 books, all available in under 60 seconds." Books are 'available', but not 'for sale'. I looked, but as far as I can tell, Amazon, has been careful never to say that books are for sale, only that they are available.

This reinforces the rental model - car rental companies have cars available and hotels have rooms available, but not for sale.

Shifting from 'owning' to 'renting' books changes a lot of the pricing math in my head. I still think the books are priced wrong, but possibly not for the right reasons.

I'll be working on laying out why over the next few posts.

A basic example

The Last Colony is a great example of illogical kindle pricing. When the kindle version and the paperback version cost the same amount, something is wrong.

It is hard to imagine a legitimate scenario where the cost of creating the kindle version would equal the cost of printing, shipping and storing physical books. If there really was such a scenario I feel confident that Amazon would publicize it in order to get people like me to shut up.

Without any rational reasons for the pricing I'm left to speculate. Are the publishers being greedy and pocketing the savings?

Is Amazon using the extra money to subsidize the price of Kindle hardware (This is the model used by video game consoles, printers, Polaroid, etc)? If so I wish they would let us know, it would add tons of validation to their pricing as well as making the kindle hardware seem more reasonable (sure it's $360, but maybe it costs $400 to make). Sadly, I think Amazon would say something if this were the case.

Without an explanation, all I can say is kindle fail!

time to fail!

I'm actually reading The Time Machine on my kindle right now.

Since the copyright is expired I paid $0.00 to feedbooks for my copy. (Get your own copy here).

I read War of the Worlds years ago, but if you want a copy it's also available for free.

Charging over list price for a book available for free
kindle fail!

Use of pricing

I don't want to be just negative, so when I see a price I agree with I'm going to post that too.

With that in mind, I would like to recommend Iain M. Bank's Use of Weapons

It's on sale for $1 this month as part of a promotion for his newest book.

For $1, I have no problem recommending this book.

Success!

Scifi Fail

I'm a big science fiction fan, so I was pretty surprised when I got to the kindle store and saw my listings for these science fiction classics



Journey to the center of the Earth:
List price 1.29
Kindle price 2.19

Slaughterhouse Five
List price 1.95
Kindle Price 7.19

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
List price 0.75
Kindle Price 7.65

The Lost World
List price 4.99
Kindle Price 6.39

i, Robot
List price 0.35
Kindle Price 6.39

Displaying kindle prices that are 18 times over list price?
kindle fail!

Purpose

The purpose of this blog is not to bash the kindle.

I have a kindle and I love it.

Sure it's not perfect, but the only two fundamental issues I have with it are the inability to flip pages and that you can't use it on an airplane during takeoff and landing.

I'm sure paging will be fixed by the time I need a new kindle, and there's lots of pressure on airplane manufactures to insulate plane equipment so that passengers can use electronics the whole flight.

So if I love my kindle, and I foresee all of the fundamental problems with it being fixed over time, why the blog?

It's because there is a non-fundamental problem with the pricing of content on the kindle. This problem can be solved tomorrow with a few clicks of the mouse (by lowering prices), or with a software update (by changing the licensing terms). I don't need to wait for the next kindle, or for new airplanes, but I won't get what I want without making my voice heard.

To be clear, I am against buying content for the kindle or charging for books, I am against the current pricing of books. I want the prices lowered, or the terms of sale changed.

Thanks for your support!