I’ve written before about what I call the register/deregister dance.
What happens in r/dd is that someone will register to an account, download books from those archive, deregister from the account, and still have the books on the device.
Many people have reported doing this, and it seems to have worked in the past.
I’ve asked Amazon different times in different ways (including snail mailing their legal department) if this was okay.
It clearly isn’t okay (under the Terms of Service) to sell or give a Kindle to someone not on your account with Kindle content on it, but that’s not what’s happening in this case. When the person downloads from the archives, they are on that account. The ownership of the Kindle doesn’t change.
However, someone in the Amazon Kindle community just reported getting this message:
“Are you sure you want to deregister this device? Deregistering will remove all of your licensed content from this device. If you plan to re-register this device in the future you will need to re-download your licensed contents from the archived items.”
That was on a Kindle for Mac installation.
I’ve asked Amazon if this is true just for reader apps, or for Kindles as well.
If it’s true for Kindles, it’s definitely a change, and a significant one. I also hadn’t heard of that happening on Kindle apps before, but I suppose it might have been.
I checked to see if the Help Page from Amazon was updated…it still seems to indicate that you would have to remove the books manually:
“Also, once the Kindle is deregistered, any books, subscriptions, or other content you’ve purchased from the Kindle Store will no longer be delivered to the device.
Remove all purchased material from the Kindle device. Purchased Kindle content cannot be sold according to the License Agreement and Terms of Use of the Amazon Kindle” —Amazon Help Page
That first part is saying that you can’t get books from your archives, and we knew that.
This would complicate things for parents who have been putting books on to a minor’s Kindle, and then deregistering it so that child can’t buy more books from the Kindle store, and, on a Kindle without wifi, get on the internet.
I’ll let you know if I hear more.
If you’ve been doing the r/dd, let me know if it’s changed for you.
This might, I suppose, be connected to us getting the ability to lend books to people not on the account…publishers might (purely hypothetically) have tightened up on this to allow the new lending feature, which we are supposed to have before the end of the year.
UPDATE: One of the helpful members of Kindle Customer Service, Sean C., responded to my question:
“Kindle content previously downloaded to a device remains on the device even after it has been deregistered. For Kindle reading apps, content can only be read while the app is registered to the account where the content was purchased.”
Kindles are for reading? 7 of the top 10 sellers are games
Kindleers tend to make a big deal about how they got their devices for reading. That’s why they don’t care about things like color and animation that you can get on tablet computers (like the iPad and the NOOKcolor).
However, the bestseller list may tell a different tale.
the official Amazon Kindle team says that millions of Kindle 3s have been sold…that more Kindles have been sold in the past 73 days than in all of 2009.
That’s with limits on the number of Kindles each customer can buy and with delivery times abroad (I assume the count here) of 7-9 weeks.
My guess is that the NOOKcolor is also selling very well. We’re still in an explosive growth phase of the e-book and EBR (E-Book Reader) market. Kindle sales can continue to increase, even with the introduction of more alternatives.
How would you feel about advertising being in your e-books?
Ow…ow…that hurt my ears, folks!
I get it. You don’t want it. You’ll pitch your Kindles out the window, dive out another window, and never read anything again as long as you live! You’ll hold your thoughts until your brains turn blue!
😉
This comes up from time to time. It sometimes happens when somebody stumbles across an old story about Amazon having filed a patent connected to advertising in e-books.
I think my readers tend to be pretty even-tempered folks, but if any of you need to put some liniment on after those violent knee-jerk reactions, we’ll wait for you. 😉
Okay, let’s look at the possibilities.
At one end of the spectrum is the No Tolerance for Advertising position…“Not nobody, not no how!”. 😉 I think that’s where a lot of people think we are now, and where they think we always have been.
At the other end is Full Frontal Advertising. In the middle of a book, you’d get an ad that is unrelated to what you are reading…like an antacid ad in the middle of Romeo and Juliet.
In between, there are a lot of other possibilities…and I think that some of them could succeed commercially…and yes, be accepted by a lot of consumers.
There are two key factors to me in the nature of the advertising: intrusiveness and appropriateness. It’s a grid with two axes.
Most Intrusive, Least Appropriate
Most Intrusive, Most Appropriate
Least Intrusive, Least Appropriate
Least Intrusive, Most Appropriate
I think the first two are the hardest to sell. If you can’t read without being “interrupted” and if the interruption has nothing to do with what you are reading, people will tend not to accept it.
If the ad is appropriate and doesn’t interrupt, people might actually appreciate it.
Ow…let me explain. 🙂
Let’s say you were reading a travel book about Hawaii. In the very back of the book, there is a coupon code for $500 off airfare. That would be nice, right? Not all the books we read are fiction with a driving narrative throughout. It’s non-intrusive…it doesn’t show up until you’ve read everything else (although it could be in the Table of Contents). It’s appropriate.
What if the fact that the ad was in there made the book cheaper for you…maybe even free?
That might be worth it, right?
How about this as another way to be fairly unobtrusive: product placement? Doesn’t it seem silly sometimes in a realistic novel when they never go to a Starbucks? Yes, it’s fun to have fictional places, but it can be a bit jarring…like the 555 telephone numbers. The publisher could be paid for using the Starbucks name, and the author could approve the use of the name. It doesn’t have to be, “Let’s go to Starbucks…my favoritest place ever with the new Curry Latte for only $3.95.” 😉
Starting to see the sliding scales?
Let’s deal with existing and former advertising that we already have or have had in paperbooks.
First, there is often a list of other books in the series at the front or the back of the book. That’s an ad, right? Sometimes, there are ads for other books…even a sample chapter. It’s an ad that’s informative, but still, it’s there partially to get you interested in the other books.
Second, there were actual ads in mass market paperbacks a few decades ago. Some of you will remember them…you’d be reading a novel, and you’d run into a full color, glossy cigarette ad smack in the middle. Why don’t we have those any more?
My guess is that it just wasn’t cost-effective for the advertisers. Many, many books sell under ten thousand copies. Most places, you’ll reach that many people with an ad for a car wash in the middle of the night on the dinkiest TV station in your town. On TV, they’ll also run it several times…repetition helps.
I also think most readers just skipped it…that they didn’t really read it, and it probably didn’t produce many sales.
If you go back further, quite a few of the novels we consider classics (Dostoevsky, Dickens, Doyle) were originally published serialized in magazines…magazines which I assume had advertising.
My feeling?
Advertising in e-books is inevitable.
Ow! 😉
Not in all e-books…I think it may be optional. Choose an advertising supported copy, save a couple of bucks…maybe get it free. The ads could be just in the front of the book (sort of like the advertising you choose on Hulu), or in the back.
I think non-optional ads are less likely, at least initially. People do accept advertising in their media: TV, magazines, movies (previews, for one). However, reading a book is a very intimate experience, and we don’t like people messing with that. People reacted pretty strongly to the Popular Highlights feature when it was first introduced…but lots of people are participating.
Will it be more successful for advertisers than those old mass market ads? I think it could be…first, I think several people are likely to read an e-book on an account. It may be more possible to reach the demographic you want. Second, the ad can evolve over time (not in a copy you’ve already downloaded, most likely, but as other people download from the store). That could help. People may also be more able to handle distractions than they were in the past. Our e-books go with us in a way that our paperbooks couldn’t. We are already reading them in much more distracting environments.
It has started, by the way: if you read the article I linked above, you’ll hear about http://www.wowio.com already doing e-books with advertising. They are also doing things the other way…buy something else, get an e-book. Subscribe to Maxim, get the original graphic novel of Cowboys and Aliens.
My guess?
We’ll see advertising in some e-books, and it will succeed if they can balance intrusiveness and appropriateness.
What do you think?
I’m guessing some of you have more to say than you can do just answering that poll. Feel free to leave me a comment…
This is always interesting information, and I recommend that you give it a read.
I’ll just hit a highlight or two, to serve as an appetizer to the entrée you can get there. 😉
E-book sales are up 171.3% for the year to date over the same period last year.
Mass market paperbacks continue to lose market share (down 14.3% in sales year to date): and I’m guessing that they’ll continue to retract next year. That’s the segment I think loses the most to e-books. They’ve both been positioned as the cheap, convenient alternative…and e-books do those better (when you are buying new).
Freebie flash! A bunch of pre-order shorts…including Jackie Collins
As usual, I don’t vouch for these books, and they come from companies that are not (to my knowledge) blocking text-to-speech. As promotional titles, they may not be free for long. Note: these books are free in the USA: prices in other countries may vary.
Sometimes, I’m doing something, and I get to thinking…does anybody else do this? Being geeky, though, it isn’t just whether anybody does it…it’s how many people do it.
In my case, I’ve got people to ask (that would be you). 🙂
I also need to be clear…I haven’t done everything on this list. I have done some of them, but not all…I’ll leave you to speculate which is which. I reserve the right not to answer if you leave a comment to ask me. 😉
Also, I can’t tell who answered which questions…and certainly not who answered it which way. You can answer this anonymously…you can lie, if you want, but it will be more interesting if you don’t.
I’m going to set up a little context…and again, I’m going to make up some of it.
1. It’s really easy to hold a Kindle. As an ambidexter, I appreciate that the buttons are on both sides of the K3, so I can switch hands. However, there are sometimes you need both hands to do something else. Still, you might not want to stop reading.
2. People come up to you and say, “What are you reading?” Well, one of the great things about the Kindle is they can’t tell unless you show them. You might be reading a freebie in a genre that would surprise people…or something controversial.
3. If you sit in one place for a long time in your house, you may get company…your cat or small dog may climb in your lap. If you read lying on the floor, or let your pets on the bed, you may get a big dog very close to you.
4. Parents worry about their kids (including teenagers) going to inappropriate sites on the Kindle’s web browser. Back with the K1, we used to sort of reassure them that the browser was so clunky, it would be more trouble than it was worth. That sort of material was available other places much more easily. With the Kindle 3, though, the web browser has improved. There is still no color or animation, but you can get to still pictures more easily.
5. Some of you don’t have Kindles, but your Significant Other or another family member does. Maybe it’s a coworker. It must be tempting, wondering what’s going on beneath that screen. At some point, you’ve probably come across the Kindle by itself…with the owner nowhere in sight…
6. Backlight is hard on the eyes, and drains a battery charge the way piranhas can strip a cow to the bones. But honestly…color could be nice. Animation might be cool. You’d never switch for long form reading, but…
7. You got your Kindle to read, right? It’s the best darn dedicated reader out there. You don’t need all those bell and whistles. Still, those games are fun…and music is always an attraction.
8. Text-to-speech gives a whole new dimension to driving in the car. If it’s just you and the Kindle in the car, it’s like a literary date.
9. It’s wonderful that so many classics are available. Now you can get all those books you always meant to read, like War and Peace. But seriously…are you ever really going to read it?
10. We love our Kindles…maybe too much. Sometimes, we’re like parents wanting to show off 100 pictures of our kids. There are times when you don’t really want to read, but you pull out your Kindle so people will ask you questions about it.
I’m looking forward to seeing the answers to these!
My readers have said they want to know about all the new games, free or not. This is the latest one, currently priced at $3.99. You can read about other games for the Kindle in the games category.
They do have a free daily game…but it didn’t work in either of my browsers. Don’t take that as a knock on the Kindle game, though…according to the two reviews, that seems to work well.
I go there regularly…Amazon has a forum for me there, and it’s one of the places I answer questions for people…and where they can contact me.
Well, in the past there was one particularly jarring thing on that page. I am not a graphic artist, by any stretch of the imagination. My cover images? People have correctly told me they are…um…substandard. 😉
I didn’t even put cover images on a couple of my titles…and it used to just say something like, “No image available”.
Today, there are generic covers. It’s sort of like a wall with a dado (a word my Kindle taught me). In other words, it’s divided horizontally into two colors.
For quite a while, US customers have been limited to three Kindles per customer (while customers outside the US are having to wait until probably January 2011 for delivery). That number has just been raised to where it was before: five per US customer.
which is where I first caught wind of this (thanks, Dedalus!), the question was raised if this might be in response to the reported interest in the NOOKcolor.
I think that’s unlikely.
First, this is not a time of year for artificial scarcity, especially on a “storefront device”. What I mean by that is that if someone buys a Kindle, they are going to tend to buy Kindle store book in the future. If they buy a NOOK, they are going to tend to buy Barnes & Noble books. If you can’t get the one you want right now, even if you think it is better, you’ll get something else.
If Amazon could have had no limit, and shipped ten to every person on the planet and beyond, they would have…come on, literary arsenic-based lifeforms! 😉
Is moving from three to five per customer a sign that they aren’t selling as well as before, possibly due to the popularity of the NOOKcolor?
I think not. 🙂
Amazon doesn’t gather the components in the forests of Washington and assemble them in Seattle. They are dependent on a supply chain…including VizPlex, which makes the E Ink screen used by the Kindle (and the NOOK and the Sony). My guess is that they got a big enough delivery that they could up the limit and not run out. As soon as they can drop the limit, they will.
One reason I don’t think this is in response to the NOOKcolor…the Kindle had its biggest sales day ever on November 24, 2010…about a month after the NOOKcolor was announced, and ten days or so after they started shipping. I think if there had been a significant hit on the Kindle, it would have started by then.
Are you surprised they didn’t sell out after Oprah? No coupon this time, for one thing, and it wasn’t the most ringing endorsement (although it was one).
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