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A New Reason The Kindle Sucks – This Time It’s Availability and Monetization
I’ve written my 10 reasons the Kindle will fail and Scoble has provided his video on why it’s a failure in the making. Even if the Kindle was a great device, today I have a new reason for failure. And what really sucks is that this should be great news for Amazon affiliates. Amazon is offering its affiliates $40 comission for each Kindle sold through their site. I have been an Amazon affiliate since the program began years ago and have enjoyed it. Forty-dollars comission is awesome and could certainly brighten up anyone’s holiday season. I am sure many affiliates would want to promote this on their Web sites.
Amazon sent an email to its affiliates with an overview of the Kindle and how to setup the links (which is the same as any link). Here’s the issue, the Kindle is out of stock. And while they suggest on the Amazon product page that it’s out of stock only temporarily, this is what it says just below that:
Kindle Availability
Due to heavy customer demand, Kindle is temporarily sold out. Because we ship Kindles on a first-come, first-served basis, please ORDER NOW to reserve your place in line. Your Kindle will not arrive by December 25th. Note that Kindles cannot currently be sold or shipped to customers living outside of the U.S.
Who wants to order a device that won’t even ship for over a month? It’s going to be hard for any affiliate to pitch the Kindle to their readers when they won’t get the product for what could be months. And since Amazon pays comissions on shipped products only, the affiliate won’t realize the income for months either.
This is no Wii, was it so hard to manufacture enough for the holiday season?
Ahhh…I think it will eventually succeed – perhaps not this first generation, but eventually.
Accientally watching the Amazon Kindle announcement with Charlie Rose of PBS, I went immediately to my computer and ordered one. Since they sold out after the first 5.5 hours, obviously I’m on back order, but I am told it will be shipped about December 9, but I have no idea of the shipping date for a new Kindle ordered at this late date. If you really want one like I do, you’ll wait. Otherwise you should wait to order until you are really sure — if you are able to make up your mind eventually. By then it should be available immediately.
Of course I want the ease of reading whereever I am at any moment. However the main reason I like the Kindle is the offer of Amazon to publish anything you want to publish. Anyone who writes knows what an impossible task it is to get published, and the many problems that this brings. Plus the really miniscule commission that eventually comes to you, if at all. But now with Kindle, I have six books in draft form ready to submit once I have my reader. I could submit them now, but I’m particular about appearances, and want to see my text on a real Kindle first. And the 35% commission seems huge to any author who has ever dealt with a hard copy publisher.
After an incredible amount of research time reading everything I can find on the Kindle, I am convinced that this is the best improvement since Gutenberg. What else can this statement be made about.
Charles Wilkes
San Jose, Calif.
If it makes reading easier, why the hell not. I think that reading ebooks on your blackberry or iPhone makes your eyes tired – so darm small, the displays and so on. So if it overcomes this, I’d hit it (or something).
I just don’t know if people need it like it is right now – e.g. it doesn’t look cool enough to qualify for the iPhone hype and then why do I really need to be able to download more than one ebook and read it?
For me it’s all about the screen. I’d still rather get a phone who enables me to do all this – on top of many other things.
And since the Mac user experience requires that type of interaction to convert Windows users, Mac retail sales acceleration tracked the growth of the Apple stores. Apple’s stores are orders of magnitude beyond their previous retail strategy: Mac ghettos stuffed into back corners of CompUSA & BestBuy, with nary a knowledgeable staff person in sight. With Amazon facing very similar circumstances, but without the installed base that Apple had to provide momentum as they built out their retail arm, it’s likely to be very difficult for Amazon to get the Kindle through the chasm. One thing they have going for them is the price point, but as a speculative purchase, it’s still a lot for the average Joe.
I was reading the same link thinking ‘Great!’ but that income is pretty uncertain, the conversions have got to be awful on out-of-stock products, and it’s waaay deferred.
Hey, maybe there’s some arcane tax reason to spend a bunch of money marketing it now knowing nothing will ship for Christmas, but I don’t have that luxury.
Otherwise, if it were in stock, I think I’d promote it, my entire income is from books and affiliates like Amazon.
Whether the Kindle is a breakthrough product isn’t going to be answered here: the question is, how will consumers discover if it’s the right thing for them?
Amazon has an awesome business model. The Long Tail is a great place to be when selling lower-priced, lower-demand items that are also low-cost for the distributor. This is especially true of digital products, so it’s no wonder Amazon found it so compelling to try to kick start the nascent eBook business.
Amazon provides the tools needed to discover recommended products, and to sample items such as music and books before purchase. These methods minimize consumer’s fears that they might be buying a lemon, and enabled Amazon to accelerate the revolution–and their profits–in those categories.
But there’s a problem with selling new, breakthrough products through that same online-only medium: how can the consumer sample a physical product? The problem is, they can’t. It’s actually one of the key reasons that led Apple to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a retail business. Beyond a certain percentage of the geek set (that is, the people reading this and other tech blogs), getting traction will be tough. And with a product purporting to change something as intimate as the relationship between a reader and their books, not being able to try before you buy is a serious problem.
I recommend that Amazon figure out how to arrange Kindle distribution through physical stores, so that people have an opportunity to get hands-on with the Kindle before they click “Buy.” If consumers can’t, then the only way they’ll be able to experience it is by finding someone who already has one, and that dramatically slows down the adoption curve.
Excellent Point Dave A.
It’s one of the reasons the Apple stores do so well, you can play with everything and get hooked.
See this link. Yes it does images, and also has Google maps, etc.
http://www.engadget.com/tag/kindle
Apparently there are Easter eggs inside. I really wish the review was done with knowing the answers, instead of having things listed like ” I wasn;t invited…….”
Not insightful and a waste of time to read…..