The Kindle Code
04 January 2011
With great excitement I unwrapped my main Christmas present. I had an idea of what it was because I’d dropped enough hints. You see, I’ve been catching the bus a lot lately (often with disastrous consequences, but that’s another blog) and I’ve had to leave my bigger books at home because they are simply too heavy. As much as I love my misprinted, hardback, first edition of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, carrying it the half hour walk from the bus stop after a hard day’s toil would break my back. Instead I’ve been settling for small, light books on my commute. But I don’t really want my choice of reading to be affected by the physical dimensions of a book. And so it was that I came to be holding in my hand a brand new Amazon Kindle on Christmas morning (in my other hand was the Kindle holder with built-in light).
I have to say that I love it. It’s sleek, supremely easy to use, it makes for a lovely reading experience and you can get loads of older books for free (I downloaded On The Origin Of Species). It’s good that you can get free books because, I’ve now realised, I’m never going to pay for a book on Kindle instead of getting the print version. As much as I admire the Kindle for its practicality it still can’t compete with actual books. I find the tactile physicality of books comforting, a type of comfort that can’t be replaced by a piece of technology, even one as beautiful as Kindle.
And yet I really do want to use my Kindle for commuting and holidays (if I even go on another one). In an ideal world I want the physical copy of a book to read at home and an electronic copy to take out and about. But paying for a book twice seems a waste of money. And that is why I think Amazon should start offering customers the Kindle Code.
To explain. I paid £10 for Jonathan Franzen’s new book (it was on offer in Waterstones). To get the same book on Kindle costs £8.99. It’s too heavy to carry round comfortably and I also don’t want it to suffer wear and tear because it’s a first edition and I’m weird like that.
But how great would it have been if, when I took Freedom to the till, the bookseller had said, ‘Would you like a Kindle Code with this?’ and I’d said, ‘Why, yes please,’ and he’d said, ‘Okay, that’s an extra £1 please,’ and then I’d paid and got in return a copy of the book and a printed-out code that allowed me to go home and download the electronic version? Pretty great, is the answer.
I think this is the way e-publishing should go. I’m never going to get the Freedom ebook at £8.99, but I would have happily paid an extra pound, and that would have been in top of the £10 I’d already paid. That’s a pound Amazon, Waterstones and the publishers will never see! I don’t think I’ll be alone when it comes to this. Music has undergone a digitisation apocalypse but I don’t think books will suffer the same fate because readers make a stronger connection with their books than they ever did with their CDs. Many readers, such as me, will always want books and if booksellers want to get a little extra from the lucrative market that is the bibliophiles then the Kindle Code could be a good idea.
It’s a no lose situation for the business end of publishing. Ebooks cost nothing to produce other than the initial costs, that are already in place for all new books. Anything taken from the Kindle Code will, therefore, be pure profit – it’s money that otherwise would have been spent elsewhere. And if customers are happy giving up physical books then they can simply continue to buy Kindle books in the way they already do. Everyone wins.
Amazon could also offer a Kindle Code direct from their website as well. So, in a nutshell, if Amazon, Waterstones, W H Smiths, the publishers, and all the indy bookshops clubbed together they could design a future for publishing where electronic books and paper books live in perfect harmony together. In a time where the future of publishing is unsure, here is a chance to have the best of both worlds. And the real winner in this equation will be the most important component: the reader.
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