Beginning in October, the new Kindle MatchBook program will let you download a reduced-price ($2.99, $1.99, $0.99, even some for free) Kindle copy of printed books you purchased from Amazon.  That’s any book you purchased since Amazon launched its bookstore back in 1995!  You’ll have to wait until the publisher gives Amazon the okay to add their books to the MatchBook list, and you’ll easily be able to look up your purchase history of printed books to see which books are eligible for MatchBook purchase.  Now you’ll be able to leave your favorite print books safely on the bookshelves at home and carry it around in your Kindle or Kindle app for easy, read-anywhere access, too.
Amazon says they’ll be launching the program with thousands of books already in the MatchBook catalog.  You can learn more about the program at the Kindle MatchBook link, above, or by reading the press release at Business Wire.
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That’s progress, but I think if you buy a hard copy of a book that the ebook should be free.
I see print books and eBooks as being like the hard cover and paperback versions – you have to buy both if you want both. I don’t want them to be joined as a purchase unit, because I only want the eBook. I don’t buy paper books at all, other than a few required for my daughter’s classes. (They are required to have physical copies, because the teachers require them to write in their books! I think that’s a disgusting habit, but I digress.)
You make a good point about hardbacks and paperbacks, but ebooks don’t use any physical resources other than a small amount of server storage space. In a perfect world where I’m the supreme ruler, anyone who purchases a physical book also gets the ebook for it. 🙂
I could live with that so long as they also allow you to purchase just the ebook at a discounted price. 🙂