This week, Amazon announced Kindle Matchbook. Of announcements that don’t involve an update to the popular Kindle e-Book reader, this is one of the more exciting. So what is Matchbook and what does it do?
In 1995, when Amazon started to sell books in their online store, things like e-readers weren't selling like corn dogs at the county fair. If you wanted to read a book, you had to buy it, wait for it to mail, and then turn pages. Amazon Matchbook will go back into your history of orders and offer you a discounted Kindle price, or in some cases a free copy, of the electronic version of a previously purchased book. The only caveat is that the publishers provide the discounts on a book-by-book basis. Hopefully they will do that, but if they choose not to enroll in the program, your book will not have the discount. The program will extend all the way back to when they first began to sell books through the marketplace.
This program is really cool because not only can you get reunited with a book you might have forgotten that you read (and loved) but it’s also a great way to help us all "upgrade" and use our Kindle’s more. It is a great move for consumers and a really smart move for Amazon – people who might have lost books along the way might be encouraged to buy an e-reader now.
AccuConference published a book last year and a lot of you went and ordered a copy of the physical book. (Thanks!) We signed up to offer our book, Lessons from the Bored Room, as part of the Kindle Matchbook program. If you've purchased a copy of our book, when Amazon rolls out the program in October, you’ll be able to add our conferencing, webinar, and video conference book directly to your Kindle – for free.
If you haven’t purchased a copy – you can grab a discounted copy from Amazon.com and receive the Kindle version in October.
