Arttrav on Amazon Kindle – who would buy it?
Arttrav is on Amazon Kindle. Here’s the story. Kindle recently (May 2009) announced that bloggers can self-publish on kindle. Accepted blogs would be listed under Kindle Blogs on Amazon and offered for a monthly subscription rate, usually 1.99$, of which they give us a generous 30% (hear the drip of sarcasm).
Essentially, Kindle blogs are an RSS feed that is updated wirelessly throughout the day and fully downloaded to the device for offline reading. All text and most pictures are downloaded, although of course it’s in black and white. (PS: you can read Arttrav formatted specifically for your iphone, and that’s in colour, free via wifi!)
As an experiment, I uploaded arttrav to this service the day it launched. It is listed on Amazon.com here. So far, not surprisingly, nobody has signed up to purchase this service. And WHY WOULD THEY? Blogs have always been free press. I could possibly see reading the New York Times on a device for a fee, and I can see the advantage of reading via Kindle while on the toilet or on a plane, but seriously, why?
Why would anyone pay 1.99 per month to read any blog on a Kindle when they can get it free online?
