Amazon Tighten Their Grip on Kindle Distribution

I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with my Kindles. The original was not much more than a toy, but the Kindle 2 was a more usable device. It still needs work in the formatting department (hopefully the Lexcycle acquisition will help with this—I very much hope to see epub support rolled in to the Kindle at some point courtesy of the folks who brought us Stanza). But the distribution model is a good one. If you buy a book from the Amazon store, it gets delivered over the air to your Kindle.

Now, the Pragmatic Bookshelf doesn't participate in the Amazon eBook store: it is frankly too expensive for us, and we value having a direct relationship with our readers. So when we announced our support for the Kindle, we did distribution from our own site: you download your .mobi file from us and drag-and-drop it onto your Kindle via USB.

But… Amazon also let you send files to your Kindle via e-mail. In the old days, this used to cost $0.10 per file. So we modified our store. If you have a Kindle, you can register it with us and we'll send your eBooks to it automatically. If we release a new beta, it'll get sent to you, and we'll send you an e-mail to let you know it's there. It was a nice compromise, and at 10 cents a pop, not a bad proposition for our readers.

But then, yesterday, Amazon changed the rules. They now charge for transfers on a metered basis. Send a file to your Kindle over the air, and it will cost 15 cents/megabyte. Suddenly what once looked attractive now starts to become expensive. If we update a beta book 10 times, and the .mobi file is 5.5Mb (about our average), then you're out of pocket $9. Because we don't want our readers to get hit by surprise Amazon bills, we'll probably remove the feature from our store over the next few days (let us know if you think we should keep it).

Color me paranoid, but I suspect, that's exactly what Amazon wants publishers to do. Of course, they could argue that it's fair for readers to pay for bandwidth usage, but in reality I suspect that these transfers are a vanishingly small percentage of their overall network usage.  Instead, Amazon probably realizes that this facility allows publishers to bypass their store and have direct relationships with clients. And Amazon d0esn't want that. This charge is just enough to discourage most readers to sign up with publishers such as ourselves to receive automatic updates to the eBooks they own.

I think that's a shame. We were looking at an entirely new model. Imagine how cool it would be if your books updated themselves while you slept. Now we'll have to wait for another device to become popular before that becomes a reality (Apple tablet, I'm looking at you…).

In the meantime, if you own a Kindle, and you'd like to receive automatic updates on it without having to mortgage your house, you might want to consider asking Amazon to reconsider this charge. I don't hold out much hope, but you never know.

Comments

[MarkHB]

Sir, I've been reading eBooks since my Palm III, and this looks to be the next-most-stupid thing to saying that Kindle 2's text-to-speech is taking bread from voice-actor's mouths.

Idiocy, arrant and preventable by putting anyone savvy to the 21st century in the loop.

[Paul]

The thing that really sucks about this change (for developers) is the weak support for a decent code font.
Images take place of code, size grows, as does expense....

[Jared]

Let the customer choose. Offer an "Amazon Light" edition with no images (or light weight, low rez pics) or the regular version. This lets the user get the version they're willing to pay for. Well-presented it also puts the "credit" right back on Amazon where it belongs.

[Charlie]

I didn't even know pragmatic programmers had this auto-email feature for kindle books, and now amazon is ratcheting up the price.

This is a shame. I would love to see the kind of move from Apple you're suggesting.

[Dmitrii 'Mamut' Dimandt]

That is why piracy is so abundant everywhere. Over in Eastern Europe (especially Russian-speaking countries) you grab a Hanlin V3 reader, download a 16GB library of every text that is available in Russian and there you go — no worries that your favorite book suddenly goes out of print/disappears from an online bookstore/suddenly becomes too expensive to download.

:-\

P.S. Despite all that I buy Pragmatic titles even though they can be pirated just as easily ;)

[Ahad L. Amdani]

This truly is a shame. While I use Stanza and utilize the epub format, I was really looking at investing in a Kindle, specifically because of the great support PragProg.com offered for these devices.

This is just another reason for me to hold off on making a purchase. Don't they realize that a direct relationship between publishers and their readers is a good thing that increases purchases? I understand you want to make a profit on that relationship, so maybe a 30cents to a dollar a transfer would still be appropriate. Considering the volume of readers out there and their purchases, this is still an extremely profitable venture. Why discourage it entirely?

[Lady Godiva]

It's funny the 'let your customers choose' does not apply to Apple and its AppStore.

[Charles Hunter]

Dude, what you're doing is asking Amazon for a free ride to have your "direct relationship" with your customers by cutting them off. If you like your direct relationship so much, create your own Kindle. Don't expect Amazon to spread its legs for you.

[Jocke Selin]

You've joined the game, and now it looks like you're going to have to play it despite not wanting to. Very sad. Another issue you should raise with Amazon, both publishers and customers. I sincerely hope you win this battle, as this is another barrier to entry for me. I simply don't like the idea of being crushed in the middle between good publishers and authors like yourself and some world-domination-aspiring-organisation.
Good luck!

[Dave Thomas]

“Dude, what you're doing is asking Amazon for a free ride”

That would be true if the Kindle had a subsidized price of $99, and Amazon relied on revenue from future sales to make back the initial loss. But Kindles are expensive out of the box. At that price, I'd expect open access. I'd be happy to pay reasonable network fees, but these charges seem to be designed to be punitive.

[Robert Dober]

Dave (or was that Dude? ;)
I completely agree with your policy. But you know me Dave I am the outright unreasonable, very pedantic guy who hardly knows how to spell Pragmatic. On second thought one might consider a more "pragmatic" approach and play the game.
But on principles you are just so right, you joined a game, somebody changed the rules dramatically. I do not see any reason why you should not leave the game again.

BTW I believe that the download over the air is more a hype, although it might be a lifesaver sometimes of course (but the same might hold for nuclear missile heads).

I have to admit that I am a happy customer of Amazon and Google and I have to admit that I stay very, very suspicious of their hidden agenda, as I would of yours if you had the same market shares.

Cheers
Robert

[Brian Landers]

"Of course, they could argue that it's fair for readers to pay for bandwidth usage, but in reality I suspect that these transfers are a vanishingly small percentage of their overall network usage."

I suspect it's more likely that Amazon has to pay Sprint for users' EVDO usage on a usage basis and they need to recoup those costs. The books you buy from Amazon.com have the delivery cost built in, but those you send via email do not.

[andy]

This is part of the reason I went with the Bookeen Cybook. It's not crippled by DRM. it will display any pdf, mobi or prc that is added to it's memory or put on an sd card for it.

taht's it, no wondering if amazon will stop distributing stuff for it, or will charge more next week for putting content on it.

[John Conti]

This is classic brick and mortar company dumb. The reason I say that is, they are trying to DRIVE people AT their store, instead of luring them. See customers are enjoying the relationship with their publishers. They're getting more than a book! Very important with us nerds, who need so much information, all the time.

If, for example, they had created a new collaborative model that worked through amazon.com, this approach might be worthwhile. Instead they're trying to cut off something their users want. This is a bit of the Microsoft, old school playbook. I expect more from Amazon. Just because they *can* do something doesn't mean it is a good idea.

Since voting with money is the way to go here, I think I'll forgo my next Kindle purchase :-) Come on Apple.

Cheers,
John