
Kindle MatchBook - _pius
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1001373341
======
gdilla
This is awesome for the consumer, absolutely. And it's only made possible by
the recent DOJ trial that effectively allowed Amazon to set prices of ebooks
(wholesale vs agency model). Recall that agency model, the publisher sets the
price (the same as apps on the app store). But now that Amazon can set any
price they want for ebooks (and take a loss on them if they want to, which
they have done before), Amazon can do cool stuff like this.

Amazon has already started discounting ebooks - some of the bestsellers are
now cheaper on amazon in ebook form than on iBooks. That never happened before
in Agency model, where price parity was a rule.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Agency model pricing; indeed it has
been the norm since mp3s on iTunes 10 years ago. But Amazon competes on price,
and Agency was a big wrench in those plans. Now that they can do anything they
want with digital pricing, they're applying the stake in all other ebook
retailers hearts. Will be fun to watch.

I speculate publishers will hate this. eBooks were one of the last digital
media where value hasn't become completely pulvarized (see: Apps, MP3s).
Though, its certainly possible physical book sales could be bolstered by this.

~~~
AceJohnny2
I think Charles Stross writings on ebooks is interesting and insightful. He
should know: he's a tech-savvy best-selling author. (He hangs around here too:
[1])

He wrote a couple of posts a year and a half ago, they still apply. In them,
he explains how Amazon is making itself a monopoly, and that isn't good for
anyone but them.

What's been most informative to me is how tiny publishers actually are, and
how little money the author actually gets. It doesn't paint Amazon as the good
guy. It's also why I buy my books hardcover now: more cash for the author.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross)

[2] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2012/04/understa...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2012/04/understanding-amazons-strategy.html)

[3] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-
on-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/04/more-on-drm-and-
ebooks.html)

~~~
res0nat0r
> It's also why I buy my books hardcover now: more cash for the author.

Isn't this true, Amazon or not? Hardcovers cost the customer more than
paperbacks or ebooks, so the author should be getting hopefully a larger cut
of the sale.

I think this program (if it has enough titles that I've bought in the past) is
going to be awesome. I've never bought a Kindle because paying almost the same
price for the Kindle version of a book vs. the paperback cost is ridiculous.
Now with this program I will buy a Kindle so I can read my past purchases via
that when I'm traveling, and my paperback versions when I'm sitting around at
home.

Does anyone know if you can actually use this program with used book
purchases? I've bought many books used (many times for only a few bucks
including shipping), so I don't know if they would be eligible for this
program or not.

~~~
clarky07
>I've never bought a Kindle because paying almost the same price for the
Kindle version of a book vs. the paperback cost is ridiculous.

You don't understand the economics of publishing. The paperback, and the
hardcover for that matter cost almost nothing to produce. You are paying for
the information. Perhaps the ebook should be a dollar cheaper.

~~~
johnobrien1010
For anyone interested in the average profit margins of books publishers and
some what the percentage of the paper, print, and binding for a book is of the
total cost, the Art & Science of Book Publishing by Herbert S. Jr Bailey
([http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0821409700/ref=wms_ohs_prod...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0821409700/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1))
is a good book. Print on Demand and ebooks have changed some aspects, but it
is still largely true that, for most books, marketing, overhead, sales, etc.
are a lot of the cost of producing a book. Even with ebooks, this is still the
case. Illuminating stuff.

~~~
clarky07
I have no idea who downvoted this comment, but it is very true. The cost of a
book is the cost of making and marketing it. Paper is really cheap. Obviously
it is more expensive than bits, but not significantly.

------
pdenya
I came away from this confused thinking some Kindle versions of books were now
cheaper.

Amazon is horrible at explaining what things are supposed to do. Every product
landing page I've seen from them is confusing, especially all of their cloud
services.

~~~
bornhuetter
Really? You must have missed the explanation right there in the middle of the
page, underneath the title and picture:

 _Introducing Kindle MatchBook_

For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-
edition purchases will soon allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99,
$1.99, $0.99, or free.

I'm not sure how they could have stated that any more clearly.

~~~
pdenya
"For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print-
edition purchases" is difficult to parse. It reads like list(4) instead of
statement, list(3). It sounds as if you don't need to purchase print editions
to get certain qualifying books cheaply on kindle.

I'm glad you found it clear and straightforward but a glance through the
comments here shows that several other people were also confused.

------
nsxwolf
I thought it was going to be a really tiny e-reader.

~~~
Havoc
In one of the recent Elon Musk articles it mentioned that he reads on his
iphone, so the notion isn't that far out. Not that the iphone is exactly
tiny...

~~~
fwr
Elon Musk does this? THE NEW BIG THING

~~~
Havoc
haha. No it just struck me as strange that someone clearly not constrained by
finances would chose to read on an iphone.

------
lukev
This is a phenomenally important move; now, being an "ebook reader" or a
"traditional reader" doesn't have to be an either/or proposition.

~~~
ScottWhigham
I think it's an interesting move, but not a "phenomenally important move". If
I like print books but not ebooks, how does this affect me? It doesn't - not
in the least. If I like both, I'm sort of happy - "Uh, I guess that's cool."
I'm struggling to think of the person who needs both a printed copy of a book
and an ebook version. The only person I can think of is someone with a
textbook/learning book - you read the print version (that's why you bought it)
and you use the ebook to quickly search and have at your fingertips. But for
fiction? I can't see how this helps.

~~~
lukev
The value proposition of an ebook is that (on average) it's a better reading
experience. More portable, more comfortable, instantly accessible.

The value proposition of a physical book is that is a physical artifact with
concrete ownership; you can sell it, lend it, put it on a shelf for guests to
see, forget it and rediscover it a decade later, or have your grandchildren
find it in your attic in 80 years.

These two value sets are not inherently exclusive; there's no reason why you
can't have both. But until now, the business model has prevented acquiring
both hard and digital copies of everything from being economical.

~~~
ctdonath
_The value proposition of a physical book is that is a physical artifact with
concrete ownership; you can sell it, lend it, put it on a shelf for guests to
see, forget it and rediscover it a decade later, or have your grandchildren
find it in your attic in 80 years._

This. I have a bookcase filled with "me". Those books constitute what molded
me, and (if unread) what I hoped would. My longevity being in some doubt, my
kids being very young, and my ability to tell them what's in my head limited,
in large part I keep that bookcase filled and arranged in hopes that someday
they will discover it, read the contents, and so absorb much of what their
father is (or, at that future date, was).

E-books, while convenient, can be lost en masse in an instant. Heck, a bunch
vanished last week from my tablet when I upgraded the operating system (most
were recovered, but not all). My wife may be irritated at the space occupied
by my paper books, yet therein is the point: they're not going away any time
soon without real effort. Atoms persist; bits are fleeting.

~~~
WalterBright
My father lost a great deal of his physical books in a flood. If they were
bits, he wouldn't have.

~~~
dragonwriter
Unless they were DRMed and the provider had gone out of business, or cut off
his access for other reasons, or...

~~~
WalterBright
In general, I don't buy DRMed books that I want to keep long term for just
that reason.

I buy the physical book, cut the back off, scan it to a pdf and throw the book
into the recycling bin.

~~~
MattGrommes
Are you opposed to the DRM-stripping tools available? Buying a Kindle book and
running it through Calibre seems like an easier route to take than scanning
the physical book.

On the book scanning note though, do you have a special book scanner? I've
never seen one outside of professional shops and turning the pages seems like
a ginormous hassle.

~~~
WalterBright
You're right that using a flatbed scanner is simply unworkable for books.

I use a Fujitsu fi-5120C hopper-fed scanner (does both sides at once) and a
QCM-8200M stack slicer. Those make short work of most books. The Fujitsu
scanner software includes an OCR. I scan at 400dpi. If a page gets messed up,
I use pdftk to merge in corrected scans.

I also use it to scan in small mountains of old tax records and documents I
had stuffed everywhere.

The odd thing is I've come to prefer the pdf images, as they look like a book
page (!). This works out great on ereaders with larger screens like the Kindle
DX, or the Kobo Aura which has an HD eink display.

The regular Kindle is a bit squinty with a paperback sized PDF, but I bought
some dimestore reading glasses which helps wit dat.

------
TomAnthony
There are fundamental differences between a paper book and an ebook. I far
prefer paper books when I'm using it as a reference, but love the convenience
of ebooks when for when I'm reading through something. With technical books it
is very common to read initially and reference later, or to read some
sections, use others for reference etc.

With that in mind it has often been a tough choice as to whether to buy a
paper copy of an electronic copy of a book. This is a very welcome change, and
I'd gladly pay a few bucks for the convenience of being able to switch medias.

~~~
jlarocco
I'm a little surprised anybody could prefer paper books for reference...

For me, full-text search, bookmarks, and copy/paste make ebooks far superior
for referencing. Not to mention I don't have a bunch of books cluttering my
desk.

In any case, I completely agree this is awesome. I've been considering selling
most of my old physical books and buying the ebook versions, and this will
save me a bunch of money.

~~~
VLM
The almost stereotypical star trek DS9 scene where (anyone) is working on
something complicated and has five PADDS on the desk all shuffling around.

Relatively few people own and simultaneously use multiple ereaders. Probably
much more common in the future.

~~~
jlarocco
Ah, that makes sense. Referencing multiple ebooks away from a computer would
be hugely inconvenient.

For me, using a book for reference almost always means I'm writing code and
have the online Kindle app open in one or more browser tabs. I didn't even
consider the use case where somebody would be referencing books away from the
computer.

~~~
VLM
Even while on the computer its a surface area thing, which can be partially
fixed by multiple monitors, but only partially.

So, I'd like to simultaneously see a PDF of the circuit board layout, the
schematic diagram, the bill of materials, maybe some text commentary (best
install C21 first, as U14 and R75 will be in the way later...) and maybe a
datasheet of some critical ckt component. And if I'm doing something vaguely
computer or microcontroller related I'm going to want another machine just for
that. So 4 to 6 screens is reasonable. There are quad output video cards,
another solution is I have three monitors on my desk both at work and at home
with multiple computers connected to them.

------
toddmorey
That's one of the best product names I've come across in a long while.

~~~
nostromo
I was thinking the opposite. They've taken the analogy too far (Kindle, Kindle
Fire, Matchbook).

With the historical associations that come with "burning" and "books", I've
always found the analogy awkward.

~~~
heartbreak
I'm pretty sure that the name "Kindle" and all of the following fire-related
names are intentionally referencing book-burning.

------
runn1ng
I should dislike Amazon for closed-source software on Kindle and for its DRM,
but... well, they have really nice offers.

~~~
sliverstorm
Last I heard Kindle isn't closed-source, they just don't make it particularly
easy to build- which was never a requirement for GPL.

~~~
runn1ng
Read: [http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/kindle-swindle-source-
cod...](http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/kindle-swindle-source-code)

They publish the very minimum the need to publish according to GPL.

------
dsizzle
Nice! It always seemed odd that buying the paper version shouldn't also
entitle me to the electronic version, or at least a significant discount.

~~~
VLM
Buy directly from oreilly or pragmatic (or probably others)

There's a different "deal" for every book, or so it seems, so I can't provide
anything other than anecdotes WRT price. However both do the "radio button
thing" on the main ordering page and you never pay full price for paper and
ebook (at least never that I've seen)

I like how Pragmatic uploads the newest edition to my Dropbox if a newer
edition is printed in the future. I don't believe they promise to do it in all
cases, but it does at least occasionally happen. Always makes me smile, wanna
buy some more from them... Cheap and effective marketing indeed.

------
rickr
This was always my biggest hold up in fully adopting a kindle. I really enjoy
having books to lend out or flip through - not a very strong suit for an ebook
reader. Even with all the e-reader benefits I could never really make the
switch because of this.

I wonder how many people felt the same way?

------
apalmer
I am turning on Amazon, it just feels fundamentally unfair that they destroyed
the brick and mortar book industry precisely because they operate on the
principal of never having to turn a profit. Its almost a monopolist abuse of
the market...

~~~
twistedpair
Funny, Amazon is becoming quite like Wal-Mart, but we don't complain. When
Wal-Mart comes to a town, the stampede away from the old shopping areas to the
new Wal-Mart is alarmingly clear. However, with Amazon, their brick and mortar
competitors are slowing fading away like apparitions as they are outmoded by
new technology and trends.

Further, with Amazon we don't have to notice the low paid hordes that run the
machination as these Morlocks are now in some unknown warehouse out of view
toiling away to mail me my case of toilet paper so that I don't have to leave
work early to purchase it through direct human contact.

~~~
GFischer
What's the added value of a human giving you toilet paper? Now both you and
the hypothetical toilet paper merchant can go and do more interesting things,
maybe you'll meet at a gym, bar or social event instead of the random and
sometimes awkward social experience of a commercial transaction.

The human gets replaced by a robot doing the menial task, win for everyone (as
long as the pie expands and he gets another more meaningful job).

Most new jobs are basically service jobs, so maybe now instead of handling
toilet paper he'll give you a Starbucks coffee..

~~~
mratzloff
> _The human gets replaced by a robot doing the menial task, win for everyone
> (as long as the pie expands and he gets another more meaningful job)._

Your parenthetical aside is not a minor point.

------
Tiktaalik
That's nice, but I really want this at brick and mortar stores. I want the
great, curated experience of shopping at my local independent stores, but I
also want the convenience of having an ebook version. Record companies already
give away MP3 download codes along with records and I find it bizarre that
publishers haven't followed along with a similar idea.

------
vertr07
It is important to note that this appears to apply to a limited selection of
books.

~~~
keltex
FYI. I work with an Amazon author and he received an email asking if he wanted
to "opt-in" to the program (which he did). So it's completely at the
publisher's or author's discretion which I think is the right way of doing it.

Also the author has the ability to set the price for the Kindle version. It's
dependent on the retail price but from what I've seen if the Kindle book is
>$6 the author can do $2.99, $1.99, $0.99 or free. Then as the price gets
lower (>$4) the options narrow to $1.99, $0.99 or free and so on.

------
doublerebel
Free or discounted ebooks to replace past paper purchases -- with the name
Matchbook it rings a bit too Fahrenheit 451.

Was there not a less creepy name available?

~~~
dankoss
Matchbook = matching your physical book purchases with e-books.

------
arjn
So basically if you bought a book in the past from Amazon, you may be able to
get a kindle version for up to $3. Its not a bad deal for customers and
additional revenue in Amazon's coffers for a minor service. I think they
should make it a flat rate at $0.50 and drop the variable pricing.

~~~
Havoc
Well it sounds like they are (maybe) already making a loss on it so I'm not
sure dropping the price by a further 80% is feasible.

------
ezequiel-garzon
Does anybody know if this will allow people outside the US to participate? By
now I have bought books from Amazon US, UK, France and Spain. Also, will
Amazon make available all the (eligible) titles I have purchased, in all the
various international branches?

------
acjohnson55
Most of my Amazon print book purchases are from used book resellers like
BetterWorldBooks. I wonder if this offer is available for all book purchases
through their marketplace? If so, bravo! Finally, we're starting to get
services that begin to match what our technology offers.

I'm a firm believer that people pirate not because "digital=free" in their
minds, but because they know that getting sold hobbled products for the same
price (even though they cost far less to distribute digitally) is a bum deal.
It seems like the media industries are finally starting to recalibrate
themselves.

------
alohahacker
As an affiliate marketer, am I the only one that thought OP should of posted a
amazon affiliate link and then did a case study on conversions/efficiency of
having a link on the front page of HN? lol

------
zhemao
Oh hey, that was my intern project this summer! Well, not all of it of course,
but I worked on the accounting system that will handle the MatchBook
transactions.

------
wicknicks
Can't wait for this feature. I am wondering if they would do the opposite:
Offer paper books for a lower price to customers who own the kindle?

------
smackfu
It will be interesting to see if they also offer bundles at purchase time.
"Buy the book for $12, or the book + ebook for $14."

~~~
tjdetwiler
This is how AutoRip works for mp3s. One album I purchased was actually
_cheaper_ to get the CD + mp3 album vs just the mp3 album.

------
_pmf_
Wow, I can buy the book I own a second time, but at a low price and in the
known low-quality, no-human-ever-even-looked-at-it OCRed version. Great.

I'm buying a lot of Kindle books, but I feel that I shouldn't because peddling
such low quality shovelware is not something I feel I should encourage in any
way.

------
Shivetya
I had always wondered when a program similar to DVD tiles would arise, where
the product came with a coupon to get the electronic version free. I'll take
it either way, I love hard bounds but there are many times where they are not
best suited for environments the Kindle thrives in.

------
fpgeek
Barnes and Noble should have gotten here first. Think of the difference "Would
you like the ebook with that?" at checkout could have made (in terms of
building Nook, incremental store memberships and so on). Instead, they bet on
the agency model and focused on the wrong things.

------
WillyF
I wonder if there will be any special treatment for gifts (I'm guessing there
won't be). My mom has bought me many books. She probably has no interest in
having the Kindle versions of them, but I definitely do.

------
Thereasione
They have been doing that with music for a while. I bought a cd from Amazon
long time ago and last year got an email from them telling me it was available
to download for free.

------
benologist
I really hope we see something like this for apps and not having to re-
purchase stuff just because your new phone or tablet isn't the same as your
old one.

------
laacz
This is similar to what Oreilly is doing. They offer ebook upgrades for any
paperback book you (claim to) own for USD 4.99.

------
Aldo_MX
At first I was excited, then I remembered that these kind of deals are not for
non-US citizens :(

------
dragonfax
Disappointed after reading the thread here.

At first look, I thought it would be more along the lines of, "snapshot a few
randomly chosen pages from the book with your mobile camera, to prove that
you've bought the book in the past and still own/have it now, and then you
automaticaly get the ebook version really cheap as a result."

~~~
Thereasione
How will that prove that they bought it from Amazon? This promo will be
probably tied with Amazon account and purchase history.

------
jalada
Took long enough.

