Rampant Piracy Will Be The Kindle DX’s Savior

Earlier this week, we got our first #-Link-Snipped-# of the Kindle DX, Amazon's upcoming E-book reader that has taken the original Kindle's nearly prohibitive $389 price tag and bumped it up to an even more exorbitant $489 for good measure. Granted, the DX has one major improvement: a bigger screen that makes it suitable for textbooks, professional journal articles, and even newspapers. I've spent the last few days mulling over the future prospects of the new device, and up until a few hours ago my forecast was looking pretty grim. But then a lightbulb went off over my head: pirates are going to save the Kindle DX. But before I get to that, let's address why the Kindle DX is poised to fail. The Newspaper Strategy Three major newspapers have banded together for an experimental trial run on the Kindle DX, offering cheaper long-term subscriptions to customers in return for the fact that their distribution costs will be next to nothing. The newspaper angle might be attractive for a few people, but I'm not convinced that it's actually going to sell many Kindle DX's - at least, not without the newspapers subsidizing the device's cost as part of a subscription plan. Over $500 after taxes, plus paying for the newspaper subscriptions themselves, for convenient accesss to content that is already available for free online? I just don't see it happening.

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