Australian publishers reject Amazon Kindle
By Paul Biba
This is from the Sydney Morning Herald. You will remember, also, that News Corp. has said it is looking for other devices, too.
The race by newspaper publishers to explore platforms to deliver their content digitally is hotting up with news that Amazon Kindle is, in effect, out of the running in Australia.
Fairfax Media, publisher of the Herald, has rebuffed Amazon’s portable e-reader as the way to deliver digitised versions of newspapers to readers on the run. …
Fairfax’s director of marketing and newspaper sales, Robert Whitehead, said: "We’re continuously examining all options for extending the reach of our mastheads and we’ll be very interested to see what Apple comes up with.
"I’m not sure how Amazon will go with Kindle in Australia but we are unlikely to proceed with it. Their business model represents a very unattractive partnership deal for newspaper publishers." …
Richard Freudenstein, the chief executive of News’s Australian digital operations, News Digital Media, and the leader of a team in Sydney examining the move to paid digital content, said of Kindle: "News is platform agnostic - wherever consumers want to engage with us, we want to be. That includes e-readers and mobiles, and any future devices.
"Clearly, we have to have favourable terms in any deal we do. Which means having a direct connection with our subscribers and an appropriate revenue split. These are deal breakers for us."
August 19th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Good for them!
August 19th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Ummm… Sometime last week, Amazon changed its policy for magazines and newspapers to say:
“Your name, billing address and order information will be shared with the publisher. ”
So if the two deal breakers were data sharing and revenue, I guess the Aussies are just holding out for more denero like the Wall Street Journal.
August 19th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Kindle has never been close being ‘in the running’ for Australian newspapers as Amazon doesn’t yet (and may never) operate directly in Australia, so the Kindle isn’t available in Australia. What Fairfax and News are saying is that they’re not keen on the Kindle proprietary *model*.
August 19th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Telcos in Australia held out against the Iphone’s business model as well - and you can now get the Iphone from different suppliers. It may be something to do with fairly strict anti-monopoly laws - although I think these get manipulated to suit some interests!
I can’t see my rather free-spirited fellow citizens getting too excited about a device that locks you in to one supplier, one format and can delete your books on a whim!
August 21st, 2009 at 9:59 am
They think Apple will give better terms then Amazon. Thats a laugh.