Received my new Kindle today, same day I heard about their price drop to $299. Obviously I wanted to see if I could get some cash back. Did their customer callback and got a call as soon as I hit OK. CSR said the shipping cutoff for a partial refund was July 8th and that they’d be crediting me $60 in 2-3 days.
kindle
By 7.10.09
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Everyone keeps reporting it, so we feel like we should also mention it here: Amazon has dropped the price on its normal-sized Kindle to $299. [Consumer Reports]
Amazon Tries To Clarify Download Limits For Kindle Books, Doesn't Quite Succeed
By 6.23.09
Dan, the Kindle owner who last week found that some of the books he’d purchased were no longer available to download due to unspecified limitations set by the publisher, spoke to more Amazon reps on Sunday. They clarified the DRM policy. Well, sort of.
Amazon Kindle Books Can Only Be Downloaded A Limited Number Of Times, And No You Cannot Find Out That Limit Before You Hit It
By 6.22.09
[The CSR said] that there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it’s five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here’s the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again.
By 5.26.09
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If you own a Kindle, you can now access your notes and highlights via the web at kindle.amazon.com. [TechCrunch]
Amazon Can Ban You From Your Kindle Account Whenever It Likes
By 4.15.09
Amazon recently banned a customer for making what they considered too many returns, and when they did this they also disabled his Kindle account, although the returns were never related to Kindle purchases. So what happens when your Kindle account is taken away? Your Kindle still works, and the books you already bought for it will work, but you can’t download those books ever again (better have made a backup on your PC!), you can’t receive your magazine, blog, or newspaper subscriptions on it anymore, you can’t email documents to Amazon to have them converted and sent to your Kindle, and you can’t buy any new books for the device. That $360 device only works so long as Amazon decides it will work.
National Federation Of The Blind Mounts Protest Over Kindle 2 Restrictions
By 4.6.09
When the Authors Guild successfully agitated for the right to selectively remove the text-to-speech feature from books read on Amazon’s Kindle 2, they alienated an entire group of potential consumers: people who have trouble reading normal printed works. Now a group called the Reading Rights Coalition is going to storm the Authors Guild’s NYC office tomorrow at noon to protest.
By 3.5.09
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Save $360 by turning your iPhone into a Kindle? Less than a month after the debut of its much-anticipated Amazon Kindle2 e-book reader, Amazon opened its formidable e-book library to a much larger potential audience: Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users. [CR]
Amazon Allows Publishers To Kill Text To Speech Function On Kindle 2
By 3.2.09
The 8,000 member Authors Guild—the RIAA of the publishing world—has complained about the text to speech feature on the Amazon Kindle 2, which can read aloud your ebook in a computerized voice (something text to speech programs have been doing for years). The Guild says that’s equivalent to an audio book, and that Amazon can’t just allow it without paying extra, so last Friday Amazon caved in and announced they’ll let writers and publishers disable the feature on a title by title basis moving forward.
Outcry Prompts Amazon To Stop Overcharging For Digital Edition
By 2.28.09
Kevin couldn’t understand why Amazon charged $29.95 for the digital version of Confessions of a Butcher when the paperback cost only $11.95. Amazon tried to gussy up the Kindle edition by offering what looked like a steep 45% discount, but the digital edition still cost $5 more than the print edition. Even the author’s wife chimed in to Amazon’s discussion forum to pan the discrepancy, adding, “what’s really ridiculous is that we sell more ebooks at $20 than we do new paperbacks for $11.95.”
eBay Opportunists Already Trying To Sell Their Kindle 2 Pre-Orders For $$$
By 2.9.09
Amazon announced the Kindle 2 today and there are already people on eBay trying to sell their “place in line” for a huge markup. The new Kindle will retail for $359.00 (you can pre-order them now) but if you are really impatient can pay some person on eBay $599.99 for their presumably better pre-order spot.. ugh.
Nearly 30% Of Books Sold For The Kindle Are Now Above $9.99
By 1.27.09
It’s been a little over a year since Amazon released the Kindle, and now publishers are finally getting the chance to set their own pricing on ebook editions. The result has been a slow creep in pricing on some titles—in some cases to levels above the price of a paper edition of the same book—for a digital edition that you can’t resell, give away to someone else, or read on any other device. Kindle owners have started to notice, and now some of them are complaining that Amazon overpromised the $9.99 bookstore concept to move Kindles.
