Now that I’ve had several days to play around with the Kindle and try a variety of uses, I must confess I am a Kindle Konvert! However, there are four areas that Amazon really needs to improve if they want to break through what I said, in Has Kindle Peaked Already?, was a selling barrier.
First, I thought I’d note that PC World announced yesterday that Amazon spokesman Craig Bergman emphatically says there will be no new Kindle until some time next year “at the earliest.” So, there’s no point in sitting around waiting for Kindle 2.0. Just bite the bullet and buy yourself one. You know you want it. And you deserve it, don’t you?
So, with that out of the way, here’s my opinion on what Amazon really needs to do to kick Kindle sales into high gear:
- Sell the damn thing in brick-and-mortar stores! This should be a no-brainer. Before forking over hundreds of dollars for something that is so different from every other piece of high-tech gear we’ve got, we really want to hold it in our own grubby little paws and read something on it. Find out how easy it is to use. All the glowing reviews are not going to be enough.
LET PEOPLE HOLD ONE AND TRY IT OUT!!!!
- Expand the wireless coverage, even if it means replacing — or adding to — the Sprint network. I live in a rural area on the Keweenaw Peninsula off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, surrounded by Lake Superior. No high-speed wireless data coverage right here…but there is only 20 miles away. But it’s not Sprint, so no Kindle wireless downloads. The closest Sprint Whispernet coverage is 200 miles away!
If Kindle could get wireless downloads in the Alltel network, for example, I could grab the books I want whenever I go to town. As it is, I can only do via my PC and the Kindle’s USB port. Oh, you can’t get those free sample downloads without the wireless network! This one is so dumb.
Amazon, expand the network however you have to do it. There is life beyond the major cities.
- Amazon’s got to find a way to sell the Kindle at a lower price. Preferably a much lower price. Like less than $100. I have no doubt Amazon could triple or quadruple sales almost immediately by doing that. Amazon can afford to make it happen.
Sell the damn Kindle at a lower price!
- Much has been said about the “magical” $9.99 price point. Humbug. I think that’s a high-end price for Kindle e-books. A far better price point would be $5.99. At the price, I would easily buy two or three times as many books for my Kindle.
I’ve noticed that virtually all of the big publishers are selling Kindle books at $9.99 or $9.95. I think that’s just their typical bureacratic inertia at work. Or greed. Or fear of angering their writers. Whatever. I think they need to get over themselves.
Discount those Kindle book prices!
I am both an author and a publisher. We sell e-books in PDF formats and Kindle formats in addition to the print editions. Our most expensive e-book is $5.95. We sell one at only $1.95. Sales volume can make up the difference. It works.
Those are my opinions. What are yours?
7 Comments
September 2, 2008 at 11:52 am
Hi Walt. I completely agree with your points 1 through 3 but I’m not on board with #4. And believe it or not, I’m coming to you mostly as a consumer (and Kindle owner), not a book publisher. I’d like to propose something really radical (and in between)…
Samples are free, as they are today, but how about a much larger chunk for, say, $5? Then, if you really like the book and want the rest one click will download it for the other $4.99, bringing the total to today’s $9.99.
Even though sampling has saved me from a few duds I still have to admit that I haven’t finished every Kindle book I’ve bought so far…and I probably never will finish some of them. So why not make it less risky for me to make more purchases knowing that I may never come back for the rest of the book?…
September 2, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Interesting idea, Joe. I’m all in favor of that approach but, at least for Kindle books, Amazon would have to make the changes in their system. I see no way we micro-publishers can make that happen.
However, we have been including in all our other e-books (PDF and, soon, E-Pub formats) an offer to credit the full price of the e-book against purchase of the printed edition. No takers, so far. Guess those are just different target markets.
Maybe we’ll try your suggestion for our non-Kindle e-books. We are also considering offering the Kindle-readable Mobi formats directly from our own website, too, and might try the approach with that.
Thanks for the idea!
September 3, 2008 at 12:32 am
[...] How to Sell More KindlesInteresting thoughts, particularly those about expanding the wireless network and pricing. [...]
September 6, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I’m with you on your points, but I’m of a, um, different religion:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/attention-sony-do-it/
January 27, 2009 at 12:15 pm
I have and love my Kindle. The price for the reader is high.
However, your #4 of price to buy books is one of the biggest barriers to my buying/reading more books on my Kindle. Not so much the $9.99 price, but the pricing on books in MMPB format. When you can buy the PB for a few cents more than the download and can get free 2-day shipping with an Amazon Prime account, why would you buy the download? Plus, if I buy the paper book, I can loan it to someone without loaning them my $350+ electronic device and I frequently trade books for credit at my local used book store. Not to mention donating books to the local library…
January 27, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Robert:
I agree. However, I have a lot of $0.99 and even free books on my Kindle. I also use it for a lot of non-book documents, since I can easily convert just about anything into a format compatible with the Kindle.
January 28, 2009 at 10:26 am
Walt:
Me too. I grab books off of project gutenberg and other free book sources. I also use it to read stuff off the web and like you say non book documents.
It’s great for that stuff.