The Kindle again

We've discussed the Kindle e-book reader from Amazon before on Sententiae. Some readers won't use an e-book for any reason but I think there is a place for them - especially for extended travel. It may be other features of the Kindle that will turn out to be important , however, like being able to buy books on the fly and above all to subscribe to newspapers.

Here, via Andrew Sullivan, is a discussion of the possibility that the Kindle, with its paid subscriptions, might be the salvation of old fashioned print media. The New York Times, e.g. has 10,000 paid subscriptions from Kindle accounts. Keep in mind that there are virtually no production costs involved.

Given that the electronic Times costs $13.99 a month, that would mean the NYT Kindle edition is generating in the neighborhood of $1.68 million a year. How much of that goes to NYT Co. and how much stays with Amazon is unclear.

The author of the article seems to doubt that this is really going to work.

I’m not yet sold on that vision. I think for the Kindle to reach mainstream success, it’ll have to shift its focus from being an ebook reader with a junky mobile web browser to being a great mobile web browser with an ebook reader attached. It’ll have to become something more like the iPhone with a bigger screen and better battery life. (There are signs the iPhone might already have the ebook-reader lead over the Kindle, although without the business model attached.)

And when that shift happens, it’ll become trivially easy to read newspapers’ (free) web sites on the device — which I suspect will undercut Kindle newspaper subscriptions just as it undercuts print newspaper subscriptions.

I still haven't ordered one yet myself and may never. Amazon will not release its sales figures but there seems to be a permanent backlog of orders for it. Don't know how you measure success for a product like this but if you are selling every single one you can manufacture you've got all the success you can handle.

And why wouldn newspapers with a paid subscription base keep providing free editions on the web? Just because they are there now doesn't mean they can't go away.