Kindle Matchbook is Launching in October

Amazon has announced that it will be offering something innovative in October of this year. Kindle Matchbook will launch. It isn’t a new type of Kindle device. Instead, it is a very unique way of allowing people to access books.

The Kindle (and other ebook readers) are fairly new, especially when you consider how long mass produced printed books have been available. Typically, this means that people who are currently using a Kindle probably have shelves of “paper books” somewhere in their home. The majority (if not all) of those books were probably purchased before the person got a Kindle.

Kindle Matchbook, in essence, will help people “match” the books on their shelves with the ones in their Kindle. It works like this. You purchased a brand new book from Amazon sometime between today and 1995. If that title is part of the “qualifying books” offered through Kindle Matchbook, you will be able to pick up the Kindle edition of your print book for a low price. The Kindle versions will be offered for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or for free.

What if you bought the paper books that are currently cluttering your shelves from Barnes & Noble, or from a used book store, instead of from Amazon? Sorry, the Kindle Matchbook offer will not apply. The offer is only for new (not used) copies of (qualifying) books that you purchased from Amazon.

I find the Kindle Matchbook offer to be very interesting. It is going to make it less expensive to pick up the Kindle version of thousands of books (assuming you bought a new copy of the printed book from Amazon after 1995).

Amazon might have found a unique way to encourage customers to buy new copies of printed books from them, instead of another retailer, who cannot do the Kindle Matchbook offer. If you have been looking for a reason to transition from printed books to ebooks, it seems that Kindle Matchbook will help you to do that. It appears that fellow Geek News Central writer Andrew was right on track when he noted that the the paperback is an endangered species!