ConsumerReports reporting:
Amazon is trying to sell publishers on licensing their Kindle
e-book titles on an all-you-can-read basis to members of Amazon Prime,
the website’s premium service. The plan is no surprise: The notion of
unlimited e-reading has great appeal, and Amazon already offers unlimited streaming video (albeit from a relatively small library) to Prime customers, who pay $79 a year for free two-day shipping and other perks.
But e-book rental doesn't have much chance of happening, at least soon.
Like a good deal of what Amazon conceives, all-you-can-read e-books
may be an idea that’s come before its time—if that time even comes. The
plan faces two significant hurdles:
• Publishers are leery. As the Wall Street Journal
reported this morning, publishers worry that the plan, even if it is
offered as part of a $79 sub, may diminish the perceived value of
e-books among non-subscribers. They fret that bookworms may start to
compare the $10 or so they’re paying for a hot new Kindle title
favorably against the $15 or more that the print version might cost but
weigh it unfavorably against its perceived cost for Amazon Prime
customers—which might be seen as zero.
But the reasons run deeper than that. Amazon’s all-you-can-read
proposals to publishers also include exclusivity clauses that prevent or
at least limit the ability to make similar deals with other
booksellers. There’s no evidence—surprisingly—that those other sellers,
such as Barnes & Noble and Apple, are ready to pitch such plans. But
signing an all-you-can-read deal with Amazon that shuts out the
possibility of signing another one elsewhere would hardly help relations
between publishers and Amazon’s competitors. And publishers still rely
on Amazon's competitors not only to sell their e-books but, in the case
of B&N, their physical books, too.
• Authors may object...
http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2011/09/amazon-e-book-subscriptions-dont-hold-your-breath.html
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