Amazon has released a new program called Kindle Matchbook. If you purchase or have purchased in the past a physical book from Amazon, which use to be the only option prior to the release of the Kindle reader, they now offer the digital copy of the book to the owner at a lower price point: $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free. You can read these on your Kindle or using your Kindle reader app. I believe that providing a digital copy of a book is up to the publisher’s discretion so there may not be a ebook copy for every book you own, but here’s how you can find out:
1. Go to Kindle Matchbook main page and check out Q&A if you like.
2. Login to your Amazon account and click on the Find Your Kindle Matchbook Titles button (found on the Kindle Matchbook main page up above). This will automatically look through your physical purchase history and then pull up which books offer a digital version.
3. When I tested this, only one book came up, but that’s probably because only about 74,000 books are currently part of the Matchbook program at the time of this writing. You can continue to check back as I’m sure Amazon continues to add more titles. But as you see from this example, when I pulled up one of the books that I own: Taming Your Gremlin, it shows that I qualify to buy the Kindle version at the $2.99 price point rather than the regular Kindle price of $9.78.
4. Another way you can search is to scroll through the list of Matchbook eligible titles. This is where you’ll see the list of over 74,000 titles to choose from. But don’t panic, you can search through the titles using the categorized links in the left hand sidebar.
I think this is a great program offered by Amazon. It really provides an author with a backlist of paperbacks to offer readers an opportunity to enjoy the book again on their eReaders. You’d be surprised how many people will take advantage of this upsell. I’d definitely purchase my non-fiction books in both formats. One for marking up and the other for reading on the go.
5. If you are an author and want to learn more about enrolling in the Kindle Matchbook program, login to KDP and then read their Q&A on the program.
What do you think of this new program over on Amazon? Hurtful or helpful for authors?
Lisa Angelettie
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This is great to see Amazon finally offering this. I’ve always wondered if they’d ever package an ebook with their physical books. I wonder when they’ll start offering downloads of videos with purchases of blue-ray discs.
Ooh that’s a good one. They probably should offer that but I wonder if that would conflict at all with their whole “Prime” membership offer.
well this is nice i must say it is the great launch hats off