Amazon’s Scorched-Earth Win: $139 Kindle

Two articles cited within:

Kindle to Go ‘Mass Market’

Amazon.com Inc. plans to release a cheaper Kindle e-reader next month, said Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, laying out a strategy to go “mass market” with an inexpensive gadget designed to do just one thing: sell digital books from Amazon.

The new Kindle features a screen with increased gray-scale contrast, a battery that lasts for a month, and a slightly smaller size. It will come in two flavors: one with Wi-Fi and 3G Internet connections selling for $189, the other with Wi-Fi only for $139. The latter will be among the cheapest wireless-equipped e-readers on the market, at least for now.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Wow. I think Barnes & Noble just got indigestion.

And Borders, with its very low-end USB-cable-syncing $149 Kobo Reader, just had a heart attack.

Over at Sony, it cannot be a good day (it’s just near 5PM for them in California as I type this).

Think about it! Last year at this time, one of these devices cost between $199 (Sony Pocket Reader) to $300 (Sony Reader Touch), which other entrants boasting of larger displays and prices nearing $500.

People marveled at the Kobo Reader coming in at $149 just a few months ago.

Now Amazon has just made a Kindle at half the price it used to be!

21st Century Book Publishing Problem

I was going to illustrate this with a diagram, but I’m being lazy.

But this post is necessary because no one else is yet seeing this.

The current books-as-file-things will go away.

Books will be on the Internet.

But the lawyers get involved here and that can screw things up.

So, you buy a book that lives on the Internet from Publisher A.

In five years, the contract Publisher A had for the book expires. Publisher A no longer has the right to offer that book.

The way lawyers work, Publisher A will have to remove that book from its servers.

Your book goes POOF!

This should not happen.

Buying a book that lives on the Internet should be permanent.

I don’t know what the solution to this is yet.

And it’s unlikely that Publisher A, no longer deriving income from that book, will continue to keep it online out of the goodness of its heart (because ask any writer: publishers have no heart!).

From Internet To Touchnet

PadPressed

Turn Your Blog Into An iPad Native With PadPressed

This is very exciting but the wrong way to go.

I said last year that touch would change everything and that web designers should wake up.

But offering this as a plug-in has problems.

1) Those of us using the free WordPress.com service (such as me) cannot use this.

2) Apparently it makes use of iPad-specific features that others — Android and webOS — cannot use.

3) It’s against the grain of the Internet to make parts of it friendly to only specific devices.

While I’m very happy to see someone finally acknowledging how things must change — and has actually made a move to do something in that direction — this approach is not what’s needed for everybody.