Urbin Report

Amazon pokes associates in the eye

Amazon has a nice program going for years, called the Associate program. Associates link to Amazon from their websites for books, music, table saws, etc., and if someone uses that link to buy the item, the associate gets a referral fee. It’s a small fee, we’re talking pennies from a new paperback sale, but it adds up and a lot of Associates get their referral fee in Amazon gift certificates, so the money gets poured back into Amazon.

Recently, Amazon changed it’s policy on Kindle ebook referrals. The associates don’t make any referral fee at all. Nix, nada, nothing.

Thanks Amazon, at least you could have bought the associates dinner and couple of drinks first.

The book I was going to buy as an ebook from Amazon is now a sale going to go to my local brick & mortar bookstore as a dead tree version.

Tags: Amazon, Associates, ebook, etext, Kindle

Posted in E-Commerce | 2 Comments »

Fujitsu enters the e-reader market

Before you get too excited, it won’t be released until next month, it’s only available in Japan, and it has a $1,000 price tag.

The FLEPia will however have a color screen with touch capabilities. Old School Palm OS stylus touch control though.

The display uses a variant of LCD tech that doesn’t use a backlight. The backlight is the power hog that has kept it from being used in a ebook reader yet.

I wouldn’t call this a threat to the Amazon Kindle or the Sony EBook reader, but it shows the market is opening up.

First posted at Urbin Technology

Tags: ebook, ebook reader, etext

Posted in Technology | No Comments »