Amazon is continuing to push Prime like crazy, and the latest example is a press release announcing that Free Two-Day Shipping (offered as part of the $79 Prime subscription) has finally overtaken Free Super Saver Shipping). The news is meant to show, without revealing specific figures, that Prime is becoming increasingly popular.
Amazon seems determined to become a one-stop-shop for consumers’ entertainment needs. It’s not hard to imagine a future in which people cancel their cable subscriptions and sign up for Prime instead, with some kind of device (possibly the rumoured FireDock) serving as a household hub device that deliverse TV, films, music, ebooks and more. A subscription service such as this would effectively lock a huge number of consumers into the ‘Amazon experience’.
What would this mean for ebooks? Who knows? But imagine a future in which consumers don’t pay for individual ebooks at Amazon, but rather pay subscriptions that entitle them to a certain number of ‘free’ ebooks each month. This would be a little like the Kindle Online Lending Library (KOLL) – also mentioned in the latest press release – but on a much larger scale. Suddenly that $600,000 royalty ‘pot’ wouldn’t seem so generous…
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