Information Madness

Amazon has started talking with publishers to start a service for digital books on the same lines as Netflix. The customers will have to pay an annual fee to use this service and access the library. The publishers are not so excited about this concept because they feel that such a venture will reduce the value of books and also will affect negatively their relationship with other retailers that sell their books.

However, such a proposal from Amazon.com Inc is an indicator that retailers are now looking for more mediums to offer the content digitally as the number of customers is continually increasing who read books and watch television on tablets, computers and other electronic devices.

The Seattle based Company, Amazon, which makes the popular electronic Kindle reader is also waiting to release a tablet to compete with Apple Inc’s iPad in the next few weeks.

This scheme will be part of Amazon’s Prime offer in the beginning. The customers using this scheme will be getting unlimited two-day shipping and streaming access to Amazon’s digital television and movie library. As with movie streaming, the Prime subscribers will be able to choose from a variety of older titles as part of their $79 annual membership.

Several customers are of the opinion that Amazon plans to fix a cap for content access on a monthly basis for a fixed number of titles. Amazon will be limiting the number of books that could be read for free each month.