Kindle 2 ships to first customers: Content pricing still too high

Making its public debut, the Kindle 2 has finally been shipped to customers anxiously awaiting the updated and improved ebook reader. I wrote this previous post about the new Kindle, so I won’t spend a lot of time re-hashing the same old features.

But what I do want to discuss is something that I (and a lot of others around the net) have discussed – the pricing of ebooks and subscriptions for the Kindle. Here’s a brief pricing rundown from this article in the New York Times:

The Kindle catalog is bigger, too; now 240,000 books are available. New York Times bestsellers are $10 each, which is less than the hardcover editions. Older books run $3 to $6.

The article continues:

You can have any of 30 newspapers, including this one, wirelessly beamed to your Kindle each morning ($10 to $14 a month) — minus ads, comics and crosswords. Magazines (22 so far, $1.50 to $3 monthly) and blogs ($2 a month) can arrive automatically, too.

Seriously? I read the NYT Mobile on my iPhone for free. I also have access to my entire library of RSS feeds for free on my iPhone as well via Google Reader. Most major magazines also post a majority of their content online, you guessed it, for free.

Wanna read your own docs on the Kindle? No problem, but if you transfer them via a private Kindle email address, it’s gonna cost you 10 cents. Transfering docs via usb is free, by the way.

Charging for content that’s normally free elsewhere

My point is that after paying $359 for this admittedly cool device, Amazon is still nickel and diming their own customers for content that can easily be found free with the click of a mouse. Take the New York Times, for example. While I use their mobile site to read the news, they also have a nifty iPhone app that allows you to download the content and read their articles even without internet access.

And blogs? Paying $2/month to read blogs is nothing short of highway robbery! Google Reader (free) even allows the option of reading your RSS feeds offline (still in the "experimental" stage). So honestly, what is Amazon thinking? We are entering an era of open and free content, and Amazon appears to be trying to reverse this progression.

Ebook pricing still way too high!

Finally, there’s books! When the Kindle was first released, the $9.99 pricepoint for most books appeared to be promising. But since then, prices have been steadily creeping upwards. Even Kindle customers are getting sick of it, as I found on this forum thread at Amazon.

Paying anything more than $8 for an ebook that is out in mass market paperback (which can be bought for less at your local bookstore) is absolutely ridiculous. One of the biggest draws for ebooks is a lower pricepoint than their print counterparts.

Publishers also to blame for high prices

Regarding ebook pricing, I don’t think Amazon should absorb the majority of the blame. I think publishers are just as guilty – probably even more so! The old argument that ebooks are just as expensive as print books because of the work, author advances, marketing and so forth that must go into them just doesn’t work.

Even if, in the very beginning, the price of an ebook costs the same to produce as a print book, it’s only in the beginning. Why? Because publishers only have to format it once. The book is only released once. After that, the profit margin for ebooks goes steadily upwards. No printing. No shipping. No storage. No returns.

Is the Kindle doomed?

I like the Kindle. I think it’s a cool product and there’s no question that Amazon has really helped ebooks into the mainstream with the Kindle. But I also think that Amazon planted the seeds for the Kindle’s failure within the ridiculous pricing they have, and also within the device itself. How? By the use of their draconian DRM structure that keeps the device tied to content from Amazon.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope the Kindle succeeds. For that to happen, however, Amazon is going to have to make some hefty changes to not only pricing, but their format requirements as well. Getting rid of the silly DRM wouldn’t hurt either!

Related posts

• Amazon Kindle: You only “rent” the content, you don’t own it
• Amazon releases Kindle 2
• Will the new Kindle DX really help college students?
• How can we standardize ebook pricing?
• New York Times to charge for online content – a good idea?

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