Along with its latest e-reader model, which has a larger screen and better image resolution, Amazon also developed a pilot program with 37 national and international newspapers—among them the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Washington Post—which charges monthly subscriptions ranging from $5.99 to $14.99 depending on the publication. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times were contacted for this story, but none wished to comment.)
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Yet despite their success in the public consciousness, industry watchers like Michael Norris, an analyst with Simba Information, a media and publishing research company, say it’s too early to tell whether the electronic devices will truly supplant books or indeed offer a new, viable business model for the newspaper industry. “Like a lot of things that have to do with content digitization,” Norris says, “(e-readers) like the Kindle are not living up to their promise.”
It’s all about the numbers, says Norris: “There is a reason why Amazon has said nothing of any substantive value about what Kindle is doing regarding newspaper publishing. The penetration rate is not as big as the tech columnists say it is. They say that three million Kindles are going to sell this year. But in a country with a population with more than 300 million people, that’s nothing really.”
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