Thoughts on the Amazon Kindle

There was a recent NYT article about the Kindle that mentioned that one of the drawbacks to reading on the Kindle is the loss of real-world copies of the books we read to serve as mementos on our bookshelves and conversation starters on the subway, etc. (Kudos to Jordan Barker for digging the article link up for me.)

That point is one that I've thought about frequently as I continue to use my Kindle (and the Kindle app on my iPhone), and as my Kindle library grows. The Kindle is now the primary way I read books. I won't go into a detailed explanation of my thoughts on the device right now, but it's got enough going for it to have convinced me to never buy another paper-based book again, so long as I can get it on my Kindle.

The most significant drawback to this transformation has been the freezing in time of my bookshelves. Each new book I read exists as bits in the cloud and on my device, but leaves no trace or signpost in the real world. There are many good things about this fact (particularly when you consider the environment), but I really do miss having all of my books collected on a few shelves for me to look at.

I draw inspiration from looking at what I've read, and how my collection continues to grow. How the books relate to each other, the themes that occur over time as I dive into a particular author and read several of his books, and then shift to a different writer and subject matter, often totally different. Particularly when I'm looking for inspiration for my own writing, it's nice to be able to walk over to my bookshelves and gaze across the spines that have resulted from other people going through the same process and ultimately emerging triumphant in their own way. Don DeLillo, Stephen King, David Eddings, Jonathan Franzen, Dean Koontz, George R.R. Martin- and so forth.

All of this thinking lead me to a simple idea: Amazon should give Kindle versions of books away for free with every purchase of a hard-copy book that has a Kindle equivalent. Let's take Michael J. Fox's recent memoir "Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist" as an example to illustrate my point. You can buy the Kindle version for $9.99. Amazon sells the hardcover for $15.59. Even though I'd likely never read the hardcover copy, I'd probably be willing to buy it for $15.59 if it came with a free copy for my Kindle. I'd read the Kindle copy, shelve the hardcover, and be done with it.

Not necessarily a prudent thing to do from a financial or environment perspective, but a lot of people make emotional decisions when it comes to things they're passionate about, and I suspect a lot of book lovers really love... having the books themselves.

So that would be great for people like me, but I think the real benefit to Amazon could be much bigger. If Amazon gave everyone who purchased a book from them a free Kindle copy, they'd be seeding all of their customers with content in Amazon's format, ready to use on devices if and when those customers encountered a device that could display it. In other words, Amazon would be creating a barrier for their customers to eventually adopt a competing format in the future. And if Amazon's goal is to become the dominant retailer of e-books (as I suspect it is), the name of the game to achieving that is penetration for both the hardware and the content. And this would take care of the content aspect instantly.

A deal like this would likely take some elbow grease with the book publishers to convince them to play along, but I think it would be possible.