In February, Amazon.com launched its long-awaited subscription video-streaming service as part of Amazon Prime, setting itself up to be a serious rival to Netflix. If we?re honest, it has yet to take off but let?s not be too harsh on a service that is essentially a bolt-on to its existing Amazon Prime annual subscription that offers free two day shipping with no minimum purchase amount for $79/year.
Today however we?re hearing reports via the WSJ that Amazon may soon launch a book equivalent of the service, charging a fixed monthly fee for access to a library of books. Amazon will reportedly offer book publishers a substantial fee for their involvement in the program.
This isn’t the first book subscription service out there for digital content but it could be the most successful with the Kindle. Putting the book subscription with the Kindle is what will make this such a dramatic success. There isn’t any idea on pricing yet from what I have read and I am sure they will make deals with buying a Kindle, for example get a free month with the purchase of a Kindle or something like that. Maybe 2 months and give a free month to those who already own a kindle? My thought is that hopefully the subscription service will be as cheap as Netflix. It is about $7.99 before tax to stream unlimited movies from the internet.