Had to see this one coming: Amazon is chopping the price on its plain-vanilla Kindle e-book reader and is introducing a new version that will allow users to download books when they’re outside the U.S. Your move, Sony–and every other would-be Kindle competitor.
Sony started selling e-book readers long before Amazon, but blew its lead. So how can it catch up with its new device, which looks and works much like the Kindle, but costs $100 more? Maybe Sony can do it with the help of free books from your local library.
After Sony unveiled its new line of readers this morning, I posed that question to Sony executive Steve Haber, who immediately pointed out that his “Daily Edition” machine has a slightly bigger screen than the Kindle 2 and boasts a touchscreen.
Here’s another company choosing a side in the coming e-book war: Irex Technologies, a Dutch company that plans on selling a Kindle-like reader in the U.S. this fall, has allied itself with Barnes & Noble’s online bookstore. Earlier this summer, would-be Kindle rival Plastic Logic announced a similar pact. And in other “e-book reader made by someone other than Amazon” news, Sony has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow.
Novelist Nicholson Baker loves books, but not Jeff Bezos’s device: “Amazon is very good at selling things. It isn’t so good, to date anyway, at making things…fortunately, if you want to read electronic books there’s another way to go. Here’s what you do. Buy an iPod Touch.”
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos didn’t make it to his company’s earnings call today, but he did find time to apologize for Kindlegate–Amazon’s ham-fisted removal of George Orwell novels from his customers’ e-book readers. Great, right? Almost.
Amazon’s Q2 was just what Wall Street was expecting–which in Wall Street’s perverse logic means that Wall Street will be disappointed. Amazon delivered net sales of $4.65 billion and earnings of 32 cents per share; consensus called for $4.67 billion and 32 cents. Jeff Bezos might have been able to allay investors’ worries, but he was a no-show for the conference call.
Amazon has explained why it has been deleting some novels from its customers’ Kindles: It shouldn’t have been selling them in the first place.
Amazon says the copies of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984″ that it removed, without warning, from some Kindles this week are “illegal”, because the publisher didn’t have the rights to sell them. Won’t happen again, the e-commerce giant says. Sort of.
Buy an e-book for Amazon’s Kindle recently? You might want to check to see if it’s still on your device. Kindle users are complaining that the e-commerce giant has removed titles from their machines this week and given them refunds in their place.
What happened? The details are fuzzy, but apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon with two George Orwell titles has decided that it doesn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went. Have at it, DRM-haters.
Even as the rest of the retail world stumbled in the past year, Amazon kept cruising and increasing market share. So if a cratering economy can’t hurt the e-commerce giant, what could? Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney throws out a suggestion: Movies, books and music–the same stuff that helped Amazon get the lead it enjoys today.
Are you one of those Kindle owners who stuffs your device with cheap e-books? Enjoy it now, say analysts at Bernstein Research. Because they’re not going to stay cheap, or at least, not quite as cheap, forever. Right now Amazon makes much more money selling you a hardcover book than a digital one. That can’t go on indefinitely.
Want a big screen Kindle? You’re going to have to pay up — or get a subscription to the New York Times, the Boston Globe or the Washington Post.
The last time Amazon held a press conference in New York City was in February, when it introduced the Kindle 2.0. Now the company has scheduled another one for Wednesday morning at Pace University in lower Manhattan. Expect a new large-format device that’s optimized for reading newspapers and magazines.
Amazon won’t come out and say exactly what happened to it sales-ranking system over the past few days. But it is sorry, and it would like the Web and its customers to know that it wasn’t singling out books aimed at gays and lesbians.
Last fall, a small but vocal group of Twitterers managed to shame Johnson & Johnson into apologizing for one of its Motrin ads.
This weekend’s replay: a howl of outrage, amplified and directed via Twitter at Amazon, which may or may not have instituted a boneheaded policy regarding “adult” books on its site. Or “adult” books aimed at gay and lesbian readers. Or something.
No matter what really happened, the retailer is now in a real pickle.
Want to buy an e-book reader but can’t decide between Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s version, the Reader? Then you’re in the minority: Most folks are choosing Amazon’s device, even though Sony’s sells for $60 less. Sony’s newest gambit to change that: A tie-up with Google that will add half a million free titles to the Sony book catalog.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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