Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Amazon e-book subscriptions: Don't hold your breath

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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