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Amazon Kindle: Bad Solution to a Make-believe Problem

Why Buy It?

Downsides:

  • $350!!!
  • Lose your Kindle, lose your library.
  • You can’t resell a Kindle book. (Or, for that matter, give it away.)

Upsides:

  • The books are (marginally) cheaper

Why Sell It?

But let’s look at why the publishing industry wants everyone to use them:

  • DRM on books prevents resale and forces all would-be readers to buy new
  • Eliminates publishing and distribution costs per purchased title, which more than makes-up the reduced price of the book. (And we’ll never know if Amazon raises the price of paper books when the Kindle versions are released released.)
  • Presents the technological possibility of revising books in-place after publish or purchase to reduce PR impact of errata, or possibly even to change the book’s content.

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This entry was posted on March 4, 2009 at 5:01 pm and is filed under Serious. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.