Analysis - Amazon's Kindle to become UK bestseller?

[Saracen]

You see i still think that as soon as you can buy one for £20 and then £10/15 a month which gives you a library, which you can just download straight from (HSDPA) as much as you like it will just hit that sweet spot.

I'd imagine it would go something like £10 for non-fiction, mabye with £1 suppliments for Dan Brown etc, then you might well get 'packs' So i could buy the Computer Science pack for £20 a month, which gives me access to 1000s of reference books.

That would just be awesome, and I really don't think its far away.

In this case, I wouldn't say it is the cost of the device, but the cost of the content.

In much the same way that 10 years ago you could get 'net ready PCs for £600, it was just a case of using them in that way was too hard, and far too costly.

I'd imagine that plenty of people still spend well over £600 on a PC in todays time.

Assuming that "you" in the first sentence refers to me, then no. I'm just simply not interested in the subscription model. I'll buy what I want when I want it, providing it's at the right price, and am not at all interested in a subscription. It's bad enough with TV services, and I'm thinking about cancelling those.

I'm selective about what I read, and will only pay for what interests me, not for a generic service provision.

If, on the other hand, the "you" refers to the mass market, then I think it'll be split. I have no doubt there are others like me that will only buy what they want, but I also have no doubt that there's a large market that would go for the deal you outline. After all, it works (for some people) with "free notebook/netbook with your broadband contract", and it works with a lot of people with a "free fancy phone (or upgrade) with a mobile contract (or contract extension)".

But those marketing models don't appeal to me. I won't take a free fancy phone if it ties me into a monthly phone contract, because it doesn't suit the way I use phones. Anyone that's seen my comments on phones knows I only want to make and receive calls, and don't give a fig about fancy phones or all the extra services. That's why I use a £5 ASDA phone. It makes and receives calls, is small and light, and if I lose it, oh well, get a spare out of the drawer. Also, of course, as a PAYG customer, if I lose it, the most it can cost me is that £5 and whatever credit is on the phone, and that's usually only few quid. There's no risk of hassles arguing over large phone bills if the phone has been used, or the account abused.

So subsided hardware isn;t something that much appeals to me if the price is a contract tie-in.

It's obviously a viable business model to subsidise the hardware if you can lock people into a monthly contract, because you lock in as known amount of profit, and lock in a predictable revenue stream, and then rely on inertia to keep most of those people onboard after the contract ends.

The ONLY way I'd go for that subscription model, though, is as a strictly time-limited way of getting subsidised hardware, and at the prices you mention, I'd need to be absolutely sure I'll get content to the value I need in the contract period, and that the hardware and content is useful after the contract ended. If, for instance, DRM said that after I end my subscription, I no longer have access to the content I downloaded, then I wouldn't take it in the first place.

So in the scenario you suggest, critical to me would be what the DRM is. If it were like a book club, where I pay £x per month and can have my choice of y books per month from a catalogue, then maybe I'd go for it, if I was convinced that there'd be enough books that I actually wanted to justify the cost. But once I've got the books, they're mine. They can sit on the shelf, and I can refer to them months, years, even decades after the club subscription ended.

If, on the other hand, that subscription were like a subscription to a library service where a large (or effectively unlimited) volume of material was available, but once the subscription ends, you don't even have access to that which you used during the subscription, then personally, I have no interest at all. I'd rather just buy the books I want, one by one, and put them on the shelf. That way, I build a perpetually accessible library of my own. Building my own e-library has a value to me, though limited in ways I'll explain in a sec, but a monthly subscription to a library servicedoesn't. Not at all.

And personally, it's not just that I like reading, but that I like books. E-books will only ever be an adjunct to that. They're useful for travel, and as a reference library on some subjects, but by no means all. For instance, I have a decent collection on art, particularly painters and most especially, Impressionists. No way does an e-book substitute for a large, high quality art book, replete with large colour photos printed on high quality paper.

Unless and until (as I said earlier) e-readers feature revolutionary technology (which as far as I know, we don't have yet, certainly not in production) that combine the e-paper feel of e-readers and their associated battery life, with large and high resolution screens, then e-readers will only ever conceivably be a highly compromised and only partially useful solution to me. They suit some purposes, most notably travel, but are utterly hopeless at others, like showing art books.

[TheAnimus]

So in the scenario you suggest, critical to me would be what the DRM is. If it were like a book club, where I pay £x per month and can have my choice of y books per month from a catalogue, then maybe I'd go for it, if I was convinced that there'd be enough books that I actually wanted to justify the cost. But once I've got the books, they're mine. They can sit on the shelf, and I can refer to them months, years, even decades after the club subscription ended.

I'd imagine this will happen eventually, but the first step, when its just one company, I doubt it.

In the same way with online music sales, once it became a crowded market, people started selling it without DRM as a way to gain more sales.

It will only be with choice in the market place that they will be so sensible.

[Smudger]

Although a bit of a necro, it's quite interesting to see people's thoughts when these things came out, and sit that beside how the market's developed. Who'd have known you'd be able to get one of these for under £50, and people would be arguing for them against tablets...

[Pleiades]

Although a bit of a necro

Almost 4 years? Nah...

[Saracen]

Although a bit of a necro, it's quite interesting to see people's thoughts when these things came out, and sit that beside how the market's developed. Who'd have known you'd be able to get one of these for under £50, and people would be arguing for them against tablets...

Interestingly, I think I called it dead on, at least for me.

I said the price was about double what I'd pay, and I paid just over half what it was. I said I wouldn't buy content with overly restrictive DRM, and I haven't. I said, short of a revolution in screen tech (that hasn't) happened yet, I didn't see a cinvergence between e-readers and laptops (or, now, tablets). I have laptops, rablet and e-reader, and only use the Kindle for books and my own reference material, and have yet to ever use laptop or tablet for reading a book. When I go away, I generally take either tablet & Kindle, or more likely, all three.

[mattzaboss]

No because i know lots of people who say they would prefer a good old fashioned book.

[Andrew McP]

I've only just bought a (new Paperwhite) Kindle, after being an ardent dead tree supporter. My argument was simple... books from known authors I want on the shelf, and books I'm not sure about can be picked up cheaper than Kindle prices second hand.

However after owning tablets for a couple of years now, the Kindle app crept into my reading habits, usually due to 99p offers, or simply as a great way of sampling titles. I also became somewhat fascinated by the number of Kindles I see out in the wild; my last jury service being a case in point... there were Kindles everywhere! So many in fact that I nearly bought some Amazon shares. But then I looked at their business stats and share price and ran away screaming.

Anyway, the new Kindle pushed me over the edge and although the touchscreen is a bit quirky, and the refresh rate a bit ugly and slow when you're used to the alternatives, I'm starting to pick up the Kindle automatically, rather than the pile of books on my bedside table. That's partly down to the sheer size and convenience of the format, and partly because as a lousy sleeper I find being able to read in the dark with the Kindle's screen turned right down is pretty good at putting me to sleep.

Eventually I expect to recoup the Kindle's cost in 99p book deals, and although I still love having titles on my bookshelf, and feel almost like a traitor to the 'real book' cause, my small flat has limited space and at the age of 50 I have more than enough books to illustrate my personality to visitors. :-)