Amazon announces Kindle Matchbook

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When Amazon launched AutoRip, we looked at our bookshelves and wished that us readers would get something similar. Fortunately, the company had the same idea, and is now announcing Kindle Matchbook. In short, if you've bought one of 10,000 selected titles from Amazon, you'll be entitled to snag a digital copy for between $2.99 and nothing. The service launches in October and there's no limit on when the purchases were made -- meaning that you could be offered an awkward reminder of the literature you were gorging back in 1995.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/03/kindle-matchbook/

 

First of all, I know this is a month+ late and apologies if it has already been reported. I did a reasonable amount of searching, but found no mention of this. However, since it is due to launch this month (no date yet), it seems good timing after all. For me, this is a big deal, because I have been holding out on the Kindle bandwagon for some time. Now, if I can buy an already well-discounted hard/soft copy and, for a small top-up, get an eBook version (personally, I think they should be free, but c'est la vie), it's both thumbs up from me. Current downside: it's US-only, hopefully for the time being, since AutoRip took a few months to drop US-only dependency. It all depends on authors and publishers, but since they'll presumably be getting a revenue cut, then it shouldn't be too hard to convince them.