One of last things I read on the web today was a comment by someone at Sony saying the Kindle has had no effect on the sale of books.
On what planet is this guy? The Kindle has only been out a few weeks, to the general public at least, they are on back order well into May and they are only available in the US. Of course they haven't had an effect on the market yet. They are, in all reality, not ON the market yet.
An independent thought occurred to me this afternoon while waiting on-line for a burrito with my son. We had just left the local Borders where he depleted his birthday gift cards by half. While he was browsing the stacks, I sat in the café reading a sample of a novel called The Sufi and Jinn. The sample ended right after a fable told to a gathering of believers. It took me less than a second to decide to read rest of the book. I clicked on buy and before I could get back to the home menu to select it, the entire book was now on my Kindle.
There was a touch of guilt on my part buying a book from Amazon.com while sitting in the café in the back of Borders. It didn't last long as I watched my son walk by with a stack of books. Borders was getting its own.
The independent thought I dropped a paragraph ago had to do with Kodak. When a boy, I had a box Brownie.
It wasn't an antique. Don't go there.
The trick with the Brownie was they cost next to nothing. When you were finished taking the pictures, you sent the camera, film and all to Rochester N.Y. The photos were returned with a refilled Brownie. The money Kodak was making was in the sale of film and development.
Polaroid made its money from the film as well. They recently stopped making the film. Could digital photography have something to do with that?
How much money would Amazon.com make if they gave away the Kindles? Would the increase in sales make up for the cost of manufacture and distribution? Then there's the cost of the Whispernet. That book didn't appear on my kindles in the Borders Café by magic. It was downloaded thorough what is really a sophisticated broadband cellular network.
So, maybe not for free, but at a subscription, to pay for the phone perhaps. The more I think about this; the more sense is made of their original business plan.
Can you tell it's late?
Good Night All.
-30-
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