Reasons why Jeff Bezos is your friend:
- Price of Kindle is without contract. He could have followed the cell carrier model and subsidized the device by having you sign a two year contract which would ultimately cost more. But they did not do this. I think this points a way forward for print and magazines, a way to get money for content. Eventually all the limitations of the screen resolution and lack of colour will be resolved, or people will complain less about the backlight. As on a laptop. Imagine colour, every magazine in print, back issues, books, out of print, back catalog, you name it. In 60 seconds. Searchable. Cross referenced. Links to the web.
That is what I had intended to write. Instead;
Today we saw the release of Kindle for iPhone and at least the app is free! Immediately I downloaded the app, and went to the Amazon web page on my computer to get snacking! Because that is what we are supposed to be doing on the iPhone, short form reading, correct?
Lets subscribe to a magazine, they need help! Who’s in trouble? Newsweek looks pretty thin lately, let’s give ‘em a buck forty nine a month huh? So you login, you click the One Click and……….you get redirected to this:
Not registered you say-but what is that device listed in your Manage your Kindle page-my ‘frickn iPhone that’s what!
Two unresponded emails to Amazon customer service go by, and eventually through googling “kindle for iPhone does not work” gets me to this on iPhone lounge where they have figured out that indeed, only books are available for the iPhone, and those colourful glossies called magazines, which should be ripe for “short form” reading and browsing, are not available.
A bigger question is why should I pay 1.49 for content that is available online for free?
Nobody likes paywalls but I think we are going to have to differentiate based on time perhaps, who gets what when. Subscribers get immediate web updates of magazines and newpapers, as it is now. Everyone else can read it for free a day or week later. We already see that with Hulu, episodes of current shows (ok…you got me…Battlestar Galactica…) are delayed a week from air. I am completely fine with waiting a week to see this online and save myself the cable subscriber fees. I still see the advertising.
If I want my New York Times or New Yorker before anyone else, I should pay. Otherwise wait a day or a week. Blogs can still create links, they just can’t do it within seconds of an article appearing online. Perhaps bloggers could pay (hey-there’s a idea!) to scrape. And get paid to be scraped. It would at least create a marketplace for content and support the people who create it.
We talk about mental transaction overhead-why people don’t want to pay for these things. At some point you have to live in the real world of food and rent, don’t you?