Confessions of a technophile

A group of Amazon customers have decided to boycott Kindle titles that cost more than $9.99. So far, nearly 800 books have been tagged "9 99boycott".

It's the case of greedy publishers who do not incur distribution and other costs that are typically associated with selling physical books. Their counterparts in the music industry had once pressured Apple to raise the price of iTunes' 99-cent music downloads, but Steve Jobs was adamant about keeping the price. Any effort to raise prices would backfire on the record labels themselves as well as Apple, since consumers may be driven to free downloads from illegal P2P sites and services. An Amazon customer summed it up best:

Kindle prices have been going up.

Just today I spotted a "trashy novel" for over $10 on the Kindle store -- when the HARDCOVER version costs $9 from Amazon!

Let's send a message to publishers:

Charging $11 for a paperback novel -- without the paperback! -- is ridiculous.

Charging $18 for a digital version of a book that relies heavily on photographs -- which look bad on the Kindle -- is ridiculous.

Charging $12 for a business book you can get at Costco in 2 weeks for $9.99 is ridiculous.

** LET'S TAKE ACTION **

Let's tag all over-$9.99 books with the tag "9.99boycott"!

Just go to the form field under the "Tags Customers Associate with This Product" headline and type "9.99boycott" (without the quotes) and click the button.

It's that easy.

I've already started.

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WHY?

Kindle books are kinda like movie tickets. While you can re-read the book, you cannot:

* donate it to a library
* sell it to a used book store
* sell it on Amazon's Used Marketplace
* trade it to a friend

And, of course, the book *has no paper* so it *has no production costs*.

The publisher does not need to pay for paper, glue, press time, press employees, insurance, ink, boxes, or shipping.

Amazon does not need to stock its warehouse, pay staff to fulfill orders, or pay shipping.

The price needs to reflect these VERY important facts.

We did not buy our Kindles with the promise of convenience and low prices, in order to be swindled with this kind of bait-and-switch tactics.