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It’s Official: Amazon Now Pays Amazon Associates Commissions on Kindle Books

So, it was not an early morning mirage when we speculated Saturday morning that Amazon had changed its policies to resume paying “advertising commissions” on Kindle books and other Kindle content.

Amazon officially announced the major Kindle content marketing initiative moments ago in this post to its Amazon Associates blog:

May 03, 2010

Changes to Amazon Kindle Advertising Fees

We’re sending this note to announce a couple of changes to the Associates Program that relate to Amazon Kindle. Kindle is the #1 bestselling, most-gifted, and most wished-for product at Amazon.com. Please read on for further details.
Earn Advertising Fees on Kindle Books
Amazon is excited to announce that effective May 1, 2010, you can earn advertising fees on Kindle books. With over 500,000 books, including 105 of 112 New York Times® Best Sellers, Kindle books represent another great way to earn money advertising Amazon products. Advertising fees range from 4 to 8.5%.

Kindle Device Advertising Fee Rates Have Changed
Also effective May 1, 2010, Kindle devices have a new advertising fee. Kindle devices will be included in the “General Products” category and are eligible for 4 to 8.5% in advertising fees depending on the number of qualifying products you refer. Kindle newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other subscriptions will also be included in the “General Products” category. See the Operating Agreement for more information.
K2-email_002

New Kindle Landing Page: Build Links to Kindle & Make Money
We’d like to invite you to browse through our new Kindle page in Associates Central which gives you an overview of all the tools you’ll need to easily build links and earn money on everything Kindle related, all in one place!

There are several simple ways to earn advertising fees on Kindle, and now Kindle books:

  • Link directly to the Kindle detail page using the following link format, replacing “YOUR_ID_HERE-20” with your Associates ID: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C?tag=YOUR_ID_HERE-20
  • Link directly to the Kindle books page using the following link format, replacing “YOUR_ID_HERE-20” with your Associates ID: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=1286228011&tag=YOUR_ID_HERE-20
  • Display Kindle banners – New Rotating Kindle banners are available in various sizes
  • Visit product links and select “Kindle Store” from the drop down menu

In addition to earning advertising fees on Kindle devices and Kindle books, Associates can also earn advertising fees on qualifying sales of Kindle accessories and magazine, newspaper, & blog subscriptions.
We want to thank you for your continued participation in the Amazon Associates Program, and invite you to start or continue advertising Kindle devices and Kindle books. Stay connected by following us on Twitter and finding us on Facebook.

Is It Just an Early Morning Mirage? New Associates Page Suggests Amazon May Be About to Unleash Powerful Force in Marketing Kindle Content

By Stephen Windwalker

We won’t jump the gun on what we find on the Amazon website (at least in this case) until an announcement is made, but it is too pretty a picture not to share a screen shot from a page that is, after all, now available to any of Amazon’s 114 million customers.

Back on March 15, in a post entitled What’s in Store for the Kindle in 2010 and Beyond?, I shared a numbers of ideas for new Kindle initiatives, including this one:

  • Re-integration of Kindle content with Amazon Associates: Originally, beginning with the Kindle launch in November 2007, Amazon paid a 10 percent commission on links to all Kindle hardware, branded accessories, and content. This was much higher than the usual Amazon Associates commission of 4 to 8.5 percent, but early in 2009 Amazon zeroed out Kindle content commissions, presumably due to thin or negative Kindle book margins. Now, with intensifying competition with other ebook content providers and Kindle content margins rising to at least 30 per cent given changes in Amazon’s relationships with publishers, it would make good business sense for Amazon to re-establish Amazon Associates commissions for all content in the Kindle Store to drive more traffic there.

A few weeks earlier, I had emailed the same concept to an Amazon contact:

Now, as Amazon is positioned for better gross margins on Kindle content and also faces increasing content competition, it seems that the Amazon Associates program could again be very helpful in positioning Kindle content to maintain as much as possible of its current market share strength. Obviously this would be very much in my own self interest, but I wouldn’t waste my breath proposing it unless I thought there were good solid business reasons for Amazon to consider it.

Who knows whether this is just an early-morning mirage or something real that will merit a formal announcement in the next day or two? And if they knew, could they tell you?

If it is real, there are two very interesting things going on here:

  • Millions of Amazon Associates websites all over the world will soon be promoting their favorite books in the Kindle Store, unleashing an unparalleled marketing force for the Kindle Revolution, with which Amazon’s competitors have no comparable arrow, as yet, in their quivers. While many assume that Amazon Associates websites are limited to a few scruffy blogs here and there, they actually include many of your favorite authors, NPR and your local public radio state, your favorite online news sources, and many of the largest institutional and commercial online forces in the world.
  • There’s something else here that may be a slight atmospheric confirmation of our recent post to the effect that sales of the Kindle unit itself are doing just fine, despite all the predictions and reports of doom and gloom now that Steve Jobs has thrown his glove onto the field. While the screen shot and web page suggests that Amazon may be about to begin paying commissions of 4% to 8.5% for Kindle content, it also appears the commission being paid for Kindle hardware and certain Kindle accessories is actually being decreased from the very generous 10% that has been offered for the past 2 1/2 years to the standard 4% to 8.5%. It seems unlikely that Amazon would back off on its investment in Kindle hardware marketing if the hardware sales were flagging.

All this being said, I can be the kind of guy who, if you pour me half a glass of Sam Adams, I want a pitcher. While I would think it wonderful for Amazon to make all this a reality, it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the ways in which Amazon could involve its most passionate evangelists — that’s you and me, brothers and sisters, as Kindle owners and Kindle content readers — in spreading the word. We do it already, but in the new Kindle 2.5 upgrade’s addition of Facebook and Twitter features, Amazon is taking a step toward making it more systemic. Where to go next? How about implementing the following ideas which we laid out two years ago in the first, #1 Kindle Store bestseller for 2008, The Complete User’s Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle:

The Golden Age of Kindle 2.0 and Beyond — Part 2

Kindle Owners as Kindle Sellers

This elegant idea is the brainchild of Joe Wikert, blogger extraordinaire who has a day job as an publishing executive at John Wiley. Have I added my own two or three cents to it? Of course I have.

And this smart column by Mary Schmich today’s Chicago Tribune is just one more indication that this is an idea whose time is here.

As with other early adopters, many Kindle owners tend to be somewhat evangelical buzz agents in spreading the word about the device and all it can do. I have to admit that when someone sees me out and about with my Kindle and asks about it, they better have 10 or 15 minutes to spare. Amazon has taken a couple of major steps in recognition of this propensity:
· A prominently displayed “See a Kindle in Your City” page on the Amazon website, promoting the concept of meet-ups in cities and towns all over the country so that Kindle owners can show off their Kindles to prospective Kindle buyers. Although one might expect some reticence to participate in this day and age, early indications are that it is becoming a popular feature.
· Right from the start, Amazon has offered a very attractive 10% Amazon Associates affiliate fee for all purchases from the Kindle store, including the Kindle itself. In other words, if you buy a Kindle through a link like this one embedded in my website, an email, or in any other content, Amazon will pay me 10% of your $359 purchase price. This can get lucrative in a hurry.
What happens when you combine these two initiatives? You get Joe Wikert’s idea, and it is a keeper. Kindle owners are already carrying a lot of water for Amazon via word-of-mouth enthusiasm about how much they love their Kindles, and all Amazon would need to do to return a little love (and, in the end, greatly multiply the love they get back), would be, in Joe’s words, to provide “something as bare-bones as one screen with a couple of text-entry boxes where we can put the prospective buyer’s name and e-mail address …. thanks to the magic of Whispernet the info would go right to Amazon and they could then send the prospect a message with more info on the Kindle. They could also track you or I as the lead originator, so if an order results, we’d get credit for it.”
Joe goes on to suggest some great operational ideas such as credit in the form of “a free Kindle book or two” and “a leader board showing the top 10 originators. There would be a lot of friendly competition to hit the #1 slot!” What’s more viral than a proposal that could turn every Kindle into an order-taking device and every Kindle owner into a Kindle salesperson?
I love Joe’s idea, and I believe it is well within the realm of Amazon’s engineer capacities as well as its marketing vision. Although “a free Kindle book or two” would be nice, I tend to think the setting up each Kindle with an Amazon Associates tag would be more flexible for Kindle owners (who might want to use their credit to order groceries from Amazon) and also more powerful over the long haul for Amazon. Each Kindle owner could automatically receive an Amazon Associate tag and account (if he doesn’t already have one), and the Kindle could be “wired” so that an email could go out automatically with a “click this link to order your Kindle now.” Amazon could even set it up so that the $35.90 affiliate fee could be split with the buyer, so that in addition to your handselling you would also be offering a prospective buyer a nice 5% discount for jumping on it right away through the link.
The profit motive would of course inspire a lot of evangelism – $17.95 a conversation is nothing to sneeze at. I feel a new chapter of my book percolating as I think about the possibilities here — I hope you won’t mind if I credit you for the idea when I wrote about it.
Customer Experience: Every time you someone asks you about your Kindle, you come a little closer to paying for it. 20 conversations and you are reading from a free Kindle! Duh?
Likelihood of Adoption (on a scale of 1 to 10): 9. What was it I said in the last paragraph. Yes, it was “Duh?” Not that there isn’t a downside to all this viral thinking. Amazon would not want to be responsible for the marauding hordes of Kindle owners preying on potential buyers in every upscale community from La Jolla to Kennebunkport, or the guys sitting in those cushy easy chairs in every Starbucks with an “Ask me about my Kindle” sign taped to their foreheads.
.

Kindle Content Affiliate Program

If you liked the “Kindle Owners as Kindle Sellers” concept, you’ll love the Kindle Content Affiliate Program. (I know, it needs a catchier name, which no doubt Amazon will develop. I’m just going for informative here, not sexy).
One of the features that I love in the Kindle Store is the ability to get a sample chapter of just about any Kindle edition sent wirelessly to my Kindle within a few seconds via the Whispernet. What I’m suggesting here is just a new Kindle-to-Kindle wrinkle that would allow Kindle owners to buzz to their Kindle-owning friends about the latest book their reading, with a brief note and a sample chapter. Once again, the engineering required would be a snap, and from any e-book you were reading you could click on the menu bar and pull up a screen that would allow you to type in a friend’s kindle.com email address (or select it from a list of your Kindle contacts) and send off your note and sample with an easy-to-click invitation for your friend to buy the title that you recommend.
Since Amazon already established an affiliate account for you and your Kindle (see above), it would be easy for Amazon to pay you an affiliate fee whenever your recommendation results in a purchase by the friend you’ve contacted. Or, better yet, let Amazon split the affiliate fee so that 5% each goes to you and your friend.
Customer Experience: An idea like this one is bound to optimize the Kindle’s astonishing potential for putting readers into contact with each other and with authors or publishers whom they wish to follow. The same things that customers enjoy about the recommendation features of the main Amazon site would be made even more seamless for Kindle owners. Meanwhile, it’s yet another means for voracious readers to help defray their Kindle and Kindle Store expenses.

Likelihood of Adoption (on a scale of 1 to 10): 9. This one synchronizes chapter and verse with Amazon’s signature marketing and customer experience strategies. It would also easy for Amazon to protect Kindle owners from spamming abuses of the feature by requiring that such messages originate from a Kindle and allowing Kindle owners to block particular senders.

I’m just saying.

Around the Kindlesphere, April 29, 2010: Non-Freebie Bestsellers, Faith-Based Freebies, Prices at the Time of Paperback Release, Brisk Online Sales, Kindle Rising in the Land of the Rising Sun?

By Stephen Windwalker, Editor of Kindle Nation Daily

© Kindle Nation Daily 2010
 
Not for nothing, but from Publisher’s Marketplace via The Independent, here are the top ten bestselling non-freebie books in the Kindle Store for the week ended April 27, 2010:

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson (2=position last week)
2. Caught – Harlan Coben (1)
3. The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson (3)
4. House Rules – Jodi Picoult (4)
5. Deception – Jonathan Kellerman (9)
6. The Help – Kathryn Stockett (6)
7. Every Last One – Anna Quindlen (new)
8. Deliver Us From Evil(re-entry) David Baldacci
9. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson (8)
10. The Shadow of Your Smile – Mary Higgins Clark (7)

Meanwhile, it’s time to  clean out the top drawer of my desk here in the corner office at Kindle Nation headquarters….

  • Speaking of freebies and non-freebies, I’ve noted here a few times my anecdotal sense that religious publishers seem to have a passkey to the portals through which ebooks are offered free in the Kindle Store, but I have resisted drawing any harsh conclusions since I had not taken the time to assemble any real evidence. So I appreciate the rigor that Bufo Calvin has brought to a post at his I Love My Kindle blog, “Onward Christian Freebies.” Calvin drilled down on the breakdown of the 59 free promotional books in the Kindle Store a few days ago. “When I analyzed the books I came up with 41 from known faith-based publishers, 18 from other publishers,” he wrote. So, not to draw conclusions, but what’s up with that, Amazon? I mean, I’ve downloaded and occasionally even reviewed (positively) books from faith-based publishers before, and I have nothing in the world against them. I am fully prepared to grant the possibility that there may not be a level playing field when it comes to salvation, but I — and many other citizens of Kindle Nation — have called in the past for parity in the feature and pricing offerings available to publishers large and small, and it’s about time Amazon put this in place. Any publisher that agrees to play generally within Amazon’s preferred Kindle Store pricing framework of $2.99 to $9.99 ought to have equal access to a “dashboard” option of offering certain titles, up to a set percentage of that publisher’s titles, at a zero-price promotion for a limited and specified period of time. Treat us all the same, Amazon, and perhaps we’ll all get to the Promised Land together!  
  • And speaking of Kindle Store bestsellers, I noticed today that Pat Conroy’s novel South of Broad, one of the top non-freebies in the Kindle Store during the late Summer and Fall of 2009, is climbing the Kindle sales-rank ladder again as public awareness is stimulated due to the marketing of its paperback edition, which will be released next Tuesday, May 4. Years ago Herman Raucher’s film adaptation of The Great Santini (with Duvall and Danner) drove me to buy and read the book. I’ve been a multimedia Conroy consumer ever since, and in August I purchased both the Kindle and Audible.com versions of South of Broad. I won’t be buying the paperback next week, even at Amazon’s discounted price, but I do find it interesting to note that, by abstaining from other publishers’ collusive agency price-fixing model and allowing Amazon to put its unparalleled multi-format pricing experience to work on behalf of all, Conroy’s publisher (the Nan A. Talese imprint falls under Doubleday’s umbrella, and thus under Random House) is maximizing brisk online sales in four important formats. The hardcover is currently ranked #1,896 in Amazon’s main bookstore with its price discounted from $29.95 to $19.77, pre-orders of the paperback are at #760 with a price discounted from $16 to $10.88, the $9.99 Kindle Edition moved from about #500 to about #400 in the past 24 hours, and the unabridged Kindle-compatible Audible.com version is, I’m sure, still selling a few copies with a price discounted from $31.50 to $23.63. For Mr. Conroy, life is pretty good, and all the better because he’s not published by MacMillan, Hachette, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, or Penguin/Pearson, the five agency model price fixers.
  • Speaking of brisk online sales, someone bought a Kindle yesterday after visiting Kindle Nation Daily and clicking on a link to Amazon. This has happened five times this month, and since Amazon sends $25.90 to Kindle Nation Daily two or three months after each such occurrence (yep, that was a disclosure), it looks like I will be in good shape to pay the various monthly fees associated with Kindle Nation Daily in July. So, thank you! And it appears that my sales are just the tip of the iceberg for Amazon, since I see that as of this morning the Kindle is still Amazon’s #1 selling electronics item, and Amazon said in a release earlier this week that in fact the Kindle remains the #1 selling item, period, for Amazon. Other products worth noting among Amazon’s top 25 in Electronics as of this morning are the Kindle DX at #7, iPod Touch models at #2, #3, and #19, other iPods at #14 and #15, and an Apple mouse at #24. Among Amazon’s top 25 in laptops are iPad models (offered by third-party sellers at premium prices) at #1, #2, and #4, and these models also rank #12, #23, and #74 among Amazon’s top 100 in computers, where Apple is additionally represented by 8 Mac models in the top 40.
  • Finally, I’m sure that folks who understand the 21st century innovation of “cloud computing” far better than I would be quick to tell me that it would be a huge stretch to link this news release from Amazon yesterday to global Kindle expansion, but I’m not so sure. Amazon’s headline reads: Amazon Web Services Launches Asia Pacific Region for Its Cloud Computing Platform; Cloud pioneer now offers its suite of web services from new Singapore datacenters to serve customers desiring an Asia Pacific presence, and you can click on the title to read the entire release. After all, don’t clouds often bring rain? Perhaps I am out of my depth here, but Bloomberg Business Week did have an intriguing story last week about talks between Amazon and Kodansha ahead of a possible in-country Japanese language Kindle launch, and I’m paying close attention to all the tidbits I can find about Amazon actually allowing the Kindle to establish country-by-country international roots for three reasons: (1) the number of Kindle Nation readers beyond U.S. borders continues to grow dramatically; (2) it’s potential news; and ( 3) I have a small vested interest, in that my Asian publisher (Nikkei BP) is releasing its Japanese translation of my book The Complete User’s Guide To the Amazing Amazon Kindle in paperback in May and wants to follow up with a Kindle edition as soon as Amazon offers a Japanese-language Kindle platform.

A boy can dream, whether he’s Ash on a Pokemon quest in Japan or an author in Arlington on a quest for first-mover status in the Japanese Kindlesphere.

How to Make a Donation to Kindle Nation

Thanks to several Kindle Nation subscribers including John from Minnesota for asking if it is possible to make a donation to help keep Kindle Nation and A Kindle Home Page as free, useful resources for readers. Although it is true that Amazon recently dropped its “Amazon Associates” link payments for Kindle books, an occasional donation from Kindle Nation subscribers who can spare a few bucks can help us keep up with the costs of providing this free, weekly email newsletter.

Just click on the button below
to make a secure, easy donation in any amount of your choosing.





The Golden Age of Kindle 2.0 and Beyond — Part 2

(As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been working on completing this new chapter of The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle, and it only makes sense to blog some of the content here over the next few days. The chapter will focus on about a dozen possibilities for Kindle 2.0 and beyond – some may be exciting to some, and others to others. This is the second post, but you’ve figured that out already. Here is a link to the first post if you need it. Please feel free to weigh in with your own ideas in comment form).

Kindle Groups

As many Kindle owners have already discovered, the device can be as convenient for reading professional memoranda, manuscripts and other privately sent documents as it is for reading the content one buys in the Kindle Store or the free books that originate from Project Gutenberg, feedbooks.com, or numerous other sites that offer free content. With KindleGroups, Amazon would offer any Kindle owner the opportunity, possibly for an annual fee, to establish a KindleGroups Transmitter account (I’m using this word because it communicates well for now, rather than because I like it) with up to 5 KindleGroups consisting of the johndoe@kindle.com email addresses of up to, say, 1,000 Kindle owners each (although it might well be in Amazon’s interest to expand that number gratis). KindleGroups Transmitters, who would be the only ones paying the annual fee, could then send Kindle-compatible documents to all the members of their populated KindleGroups simply by sending such documents to the umbrella address of a particular target KindleGroup. Each recipient account could be charged the going micro-charge rate of 10 cents per conversion, unless Amazon decided the charge was counterproductive for KindleGroup members.

Companies, organizations, universities and other information-intensive groups would take advantage of this functionality by promoting the purchase of, or even bulk buying, Kindles for their members.

KindleGroups would help Amazon achieve an enormous increase in its penetration of corporate and other group-based markets. Naturally these Kindles would then lead to increased sales of Kindle editions, increased user time on the Amazon PC site, increased sales of all other Amazon products, and logarithmic increases in the spread of the kind of digital culture to which Amazon’s future revenue is intrinsically tied.

These are the basics, I think. Since I ordinarily come at these things from a bookselling perspective, I’ve been thinking for a while that the time should come soon when Amazon should arrange with Stephen King or J.D. Salinger to release his or her next book for the Kindle 60 days ahead of print, and then keeping doing this about once a month. Of course Amazon already knows that: nothing sells TVs like must-see TV.

But then last week I was thinking about a community organizing outfit with which I worked back in my youth, ACORN. They’ve got a thousand or so staffers spread around the country, paying for data transmission, Blackberries, laptops, whatever. They probably have a dozen or more must-read internal memoranda each week, so I got to thinking about Kindlizing their staff communications, which in turn got me thinking that every other info-intensive corporation or association or agency in the country could profit from Kindle-connectedness.

I’m kind of jazzed about this idea. I’d love to hear what others think about it.

Customer Experience: People love staying connected with their Crackberries and iPhones, but these devices aren’t primarily intended for reading and are not easy on the eyes once one moves beyond a two-sentence email or text message. The Kindle is ideal for reading longer memoranda, reports, and manuscripts, and once you (or your employer) springs for a Kindle you’ll never have to read such documents on a tiny backlit screen again. Leave your laptop home, and your Kindle and smartphone will get you through most or all of what you’ll need to do on most road trips. If you are a “transmitter,” what’s not to like about knowing that you can connect wirelessly with entire groups of staff, colleagues, or other group members, and share documents of any length, just by sending them to a single KindleGroups address. Even if Amazon imposed an annual cost of, say, $99 for transmitter accounts, remember that the Kindle’s wireless connectivity is free and you’ll see how nicely it compares with the steep monthly data costs for a Blackberry, iPhone, laptop, or other device.

Likelihood of Adoption (on a scale of 1 to 10): 7. I sent this idea to Jeff Bezos and his team a couple of months ago, but I didn’t get any love. Maybe I am missing something – there is a first time for everything – but my take on this is that it would allow Amazon to start harvesting Kindle sales by the hundreds rather than individually. Of course there is absolutely no point in Amazon moving forward with the KindleGroups idea unless they also provide a “folders” or “Google labels” feature to make it easier to manage content on the Kindle Home and Content Manager screens.

Kindle Owners as Kindle Sellers

This elegant idea is the brainchild of Joe Wikert, blogger extraordinaire who has a day job as an publishing executive at John Wiley. Have I added my own two or three cents to it? Of course I have.

And this smart column by Mary Schmich today’s Chicago Tribune is just one more indication that this is an idea whose time is here.

As with other early adopters, many Kindle owners tend to be somewhat evangelical buzz agents in spreading the word about the device and all it can do. I have to admit that when someone sees me out and about with my Kindle and asks about it, they better have 10 or 15 minutes to spare. Amazon has taken a couple of major steps in recognition of this propensity:

· A prominently displayed “See a Kindle in Your City” page on the Amazon website, promoting the concept of meet-ups in cities and towns all over the country so that Kindle owners can show off their Kindles to prospective Kindle buyers. Although one might expect some reticence to participate in this day and age, early indications are that it is becoming a popular feature.

· Right from the start, Amazon has offered a very attractive 10% Amazon Associates affiliate fee for all purchases from the Kindle store, including the Kindle itself. In other words, if you buy a Kindle through a link like this one embedded in my website, an email, or in any other content, Amazon will pay me 10% of your $359 purchase price. This can get lucrative in a hurry.

What happens when you combine these two initiatives? You get Joe Wikert’s idea, and it is a keeper. Kindle owners are already carrying a lot of water for Amazon via word-of-mouth enthusiasm about how much they love their Kindles, and all Amazon would need to do to return a little love (and, in the end, greatly multiply the love they get back), would be, in Joe’s words, to provide “something as bare-bones as one screen with a couple of text-entry boxes where we can put the prospective buyer’s name and e-mail address …. thanks to the magic of Whispernet the info would go right to Amazon and they could then send the prospect a message with more info on the Kindle. They could also track you or I as the lead originator, so if an order results, we’d get credit for it.”

Joe goes on to suggest some great operational ideas such as credit in the form of “a free Kindle book or two” and “a leader board showing the top 10 originators. There would be a lot of friendly competition to hit the #1 slot!” What’s more viral than a proposal that could turn every Kindle into an order-taking device and every Kindle owner into a Kindle salesperson?

I love Joe’s idea, and I believe it is well within the realm of Amazon’s engineer capacities as well as its marketing vision. Although “a free Kindle book or two” would be nice, I tend to think the setting up each Kindle with an Amazon Associates tag would be more flexible for Kindle owners (who might want to use their credit to order groceries from Amazon) and also more powerful over the long haul for Amazon. Each Kindle owner could automatically receive an Amazon Associate tag and account (if he doesn’t already have one), and the Kindle could be “wired” so that an email could go out automatically with a “click this link to order your Kindle now.” Amazon could even set it up so that the $35.90 affiliate fee could be split with the buyer, so that in addition to your handselling you would also be offering a prospective buyer a nice 5% discount for jumping on it right away through the link.

The profit motive would of course inspire a lot of evangelism – $17.95 a conversation is nothing to sneeze at. I feel a new chapter of my book percolating as I think about the possibilities here — I hope you won’t mind if I credit you for the idea when I wrote about it.

Customer Experience: Every time you someone asks you about your Kindle, you come a little closer to paying for it. 20 conversations and you are reading from a free Kindle! Duh?

Likelihood of Adoption (on a scale of 1 to 10): 9. What was it I said in the last paragraph. Yes, it was “Duh?” Not that there isn’t a downside to all this viral thinking. Amazon would not want to be responsible for the marauding hordes of Kindle owners preying on potential buyers in every upscale community from La Jolla to Kennebunkport, or the guys sitting in those cushy easy chairs in every Starbucks with an “Ask me about my Kindle” sign taped to their foreheads.

.

Kindle Content Affiliate Program

If you liked the “Kindle Owners as Kindle Sellers” concept, you’ll love the Kindle Content Affiliate Program. (I know, it needs a catchier name, which no doubt Amazon will develop. I’m just going for informative here, not sexy).

One of the features that I love in the Kindle Store is the ability to get a sample chapter of just about any Kindle edition sent wirelessly to my Kindle within a few seconds via the Whispernet. What I’m suggesting here is just a new Kindle-to-Kindle wrinkle that would allow Kindle owners to buzz to their Kindle-owning friends about the latest book their reading, with a brief note and a sample chapter. Once again, the engineering required would be a snap, and from any e-book you were reading you could click on the menu bar and pull up a screen that would allow you to type in a friend’s kindle.com email address (or select it from a list of your Kindle contacts) and send off your note and sample with an easy-to-click invitation for your friend to buy the title that you recommend.

Since Amazon already established an affiliate account for you and your Kindle (see above), it would be easy for Amazon to pay you an affiliate fee whenever your recommendation results in a purchase by the friend you’ve contacted. Or, better yet, let Amazon split the affiliate fee so that 5% each goes to you and your friend.

Customer Experience: An idea like this one is bound to optimize the Kindle’s astonishing potential for putting readers into contact with each other and with authors or publishers whom they wish to follow. The same things that customers enjoy about the recommendation features of the main Amazon site would be made even more seamless for Kindle owners. Meanwhile, it’s yet another means for voracious readers to help defray their Kindle and Kindle Store expenses.

Likelihood of Adoption (on a scale of 1 to 10): 9. This one synchronizes chapter and verse with Amazon’s signature marketing and customer experience strategies. It would also easy for Amazon to protect Kindle owners from spamming abuses of the feature by requiring that such messages originate from a Kindle and allowing Kindle owners to block particular senders.



Click here to read The Golden Age of Kindle 2.0 and Beyond — Part 1