05-24-2006, 07:55 AM | #1 |
Fully Converged
Posts: 18,170
Karma: 14021202
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Switzerland
Device: Too many to count here.
|
Amazon launches Amazon Online Reader
Amazon hopes to take a big bite out of e-book market with its latest feature, the Amazon Online Reader. When you buy a physical book from Amazon that's part of their new Amazon Upgrade program, for an additional charge you can get an online version of the book. Amazon Online Reader allows you to print pages, to search content, and to create highlights, bookmarks, notes and tags. You can not, however, download the book and read it in any other reader.
Example: CliffNotes Chemistry. The very Ajaxy-feeling reader currently supports IE 6.0+, Firefox 1.5+ and Safari 2.0. Only US customers can take advantage of the Upgrade program right now. |
05-24-2006, 08:01 AM | #2 | |
Uebermensch
Posts: 2,583
Karma: 1094606
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Italy
Device: Kindle
|
Quote:
|
|
Advert | |
|
05-24-2006, 05:53 PM | #3 | |
Wizard
Posts: 1,018
Karma: 67827
Join Date: Jan 2005
Device: PocketBook Era
|
Quote:
A similar offering from O'Reilly lets you, for the extra price, get a PDF of the book. So it looks like Amazon isn't keeping up with the market. |
|
05-25-2006, 03:37 AM | #4 |
Jah Blessed
Posts: 1,295
Karma: 1373
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: The Netherlands
Device: iPod Touch
|
I don't see how this competes with e-books. Essentially, all it does is display scanned pages, similar to their "Look inside" thing. Amazon is a seller, not a publisher. It might be useful if you need to look something up and don't have the book at hand.
|
05-25-2006, 07:01 AM | #5 |
Books and more books
Posts: 917
Karma: 69499
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: White Plains, NY, USA
Device: Nook Color, Itouch, Nokia770, Sony 650, Sony 700(dead), Ebk(given)
|
Hi,
Being a big book buyer of books from Amazon, I checked and found that from the hundreds of books I have bought from them only 5 were available for the upgrade and the prices seem to be proportional to the value of the book. I had a 100$ book (now listing for 137$ true, but I checked and I paid 99.98$ on it) that had upgrade for ~27$, a 60$ book upgrade ~14, 2 30-40's $ books upgrade for ~8-9$, and a standard child care book with many editions (current edition price ~10$ with the discount) that has upgrade for 1.48$ Since you can print pages you should be able to print to a ps file so get the actual images anyway on your computer (always there is snagging for anything displayed on your pc screen, but that is time consuming so better to scan), but I have not checked since the upgrade prices for the 2 books that I would like to have digital are a bit too high. Depending on price/availabilty, it is a very useful feature, but right now the availability seems to be limited. Liviu |
Advert | |
|
05-25-2006, 10:40 PM | #6 | |
*****
Posts: 335
Karma: 5759
Join Date: Mar 2006
Device: *****
|
Quote:
If you wanna sell ebooks, find out what makes regular books sell and then do it better. Until then, stop wasting everyone's time..... |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Would it be possible for Amazon to re-compile Amazon Reader App for Pocketbook OS dev | brecklundin | PocketBook | 3 | 09-22-2010 08:04 PM |
Amazon Launches Publishing Program (AmazonEncore) | sirbruce | News | 4 | 05-25-2009 12:57 PM |
Amazon Launches Kindle Store Optimized For IPhones >AMZN AAPL | Kris777 | News | 3 | 05-13-2009 09:03 PM |
New Amazon Online Service? | Studio717 | News | 9 | 10-11-2008 11:49 AM |
Amazon may be first with unlimited online storage... yes Amazon! | Bob Russell | Lounge | 8 | 04-06-2006 08:40 AM |