Does Amazon offer any sort of "buy the book get the ebook for less" type deals? As someone who likes the convenience of downloadable goods but also likes both the aesthetics and security of a physical hardcopy, that sort of deal often strongly appeals to me (and is decently common in music and video games, especially with indie and sold-direct-from-artist situations).
I don't know how much it would appeal to most people, or how much of a weirdo it makes me, but I would love to be able to purchase a book and have it shipped to me, and also simultaneously get the instant-read "disposable" Kindle copy downloaded immediately while I wait for the shipment to make its way to my home.
Nope. The big question seems to be what forward protection we have against potential obsolescence/abandonment of the format/platform.
OTOH, the basic format is just HTML3 shoved into an old-school Palm database (.pdb) format (!). There's some sort of encryption/DRM/whatever on top of that.
That's one reason I'd like to get a hardcopy as well as the digital -- the unlikeliness that the digital copy would be remotely portable without cracking the foramt.
That said, I don't entirely care about that aspect. I doubt I'll lug my Kindle library around from ebook reader to ebook reader, but I'd probably be more likely to buy a Kindle here and now if it would initially piggie-back on top of my current reading/buying habits, instead of trying to change my whole chain of expectations and behaviors in one fell swoop..
with Audible in its repository, Amazon could easily offer customers the chance to pay extra, say $10 to $20, to buy a book in all three formats (print, audio, digital) and save you the hassle of re-buying a book in audio or for the Kindle that you already own or want to purchase in print-format.
I don't know how much it would appeal to most people, or how much of a weirdo it makes me, but I would love to be able to purchase a book and have it shipped to me, and also simultaneously get the instant-read "disposable" Kindle copy downloaded immediately while I wait for the shipment to make its way to my home.