Seth Godin Suggests a $49 ‘Paperback Kindle’. Is it Really Possible?

Home » Feature, Kindle, Opinion » Seth Godin Suggests a $49 ‘Paperback Kindle’. Is it Really Possible?

Seth Godin Suggests a $49 ‘Paperback Kindle’. Is it Really Possible?

Posted by eBookvine on June 9, 2010 0 Comment

“I saw a two-year old kid (in diapers, in a stroller), using an iPod Touch today. Not just looking at it, but browsing menus and interacting. This is a revolution, guys.” – Seth Godin

Yes, in the wake of iPad being a popular device so that each one is sold ‘every three seconds’ Seth Godin suggests amazon should reconsider about Kindle’s fate. He really warns amazon in a way:

“The only way to get authors and publishers to embrace this device is to sell 20,000,000 of them. You either become the best and only platform for consuming books worth buying or you fail. And the only way to create that footprint in the face of an iPad is to make it so cheap to buy and use its irresistible.”

His suggestion is to come up with a $49 Kindle, he calls ‘paperback Kindle’ – no need to worry about color or touchscreens, or even 3G network, just wifi would be enough. But how amazon can bring down the price from $259 to only $49 now? Even though there is some speculation that amazon will release wifi-only a thinner kindle in August, how can that be $200 less than what it is now? My best guess is that amazon would fix the price of new Kindle at $149. This price is more plausible in a competitive environment. Think of Kobo Reader which is only $150 to be sold in Borders. Kindle has much more functionality than the Kobo; but in order to penetrate the market deeply amazon has no other alternative. Apple, B&N, Borders – all of them are in the market to capture market share as much as possible.

Now, assuming amazon fix the price of new kindle at $149, it wouldn’t be able to survive in the market as suggested by Seth Godin. He wants it to be $49 – that means a $100 less. Can amazon recover this $100 in any other way? I’m not quite sure about such possibility. I think, keeping that in mind, Seth suggested the ways to do that:

“The Kindle as razor. Buy any 8 bestselling books on the Kindle ($10 each) and get a paperback Kindle for free.”
“Kindle of the month club …….Sign up to get a Kindle book of your choice every month for 12 months and get a free Kindle. Amazon presents you with ten book choices, and since the cost of delivering it is zero, there’s plenty of margin for all…”
“Let publishers, leaders and corporations push PDFs and chosen books directly to their tribes via the Kindle. For example, I could put Kindles in the hands of the 1,000 service techs of my ventilation company and they’d see the new service manual daily. Or an author could create her own version of a book club, collecting a monthly fee and pushing the latest book directly to people who want to read it. Simpler still, how about letting me gift a book directly to anyone I know who has a Kindle?”

I think amazon can combine several options for selling. That would give customers more choices. Here are those: