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Subscribe To A Newsapaper, Get An E-reader Free
from the make-it-up-on-volume dept
Well, this was bound to happen. Barnes & Noble is offering big discounts on its Nook e-readers to people taking out subscriptions to digital editions of magazines and newspapers:
The Nook edition of People is $9.99 a month; with a one-year subscription, customers will receive a Nook Tablet, a color device with a 7-inch display, for $199, a discount from its regular price of $249. Customers who buy a one-year subscription for the Nook edition of The New York Times for $19.99 a month, which includes access to NYTimes.com, will receive a black-and-white Nook Simple Touch free or a Nook Color for $99.
It's that last deal that's really striking: a free Nook when you subscribe for a year. The benefit is clear: once you've got your Nook, you're quite likely to buy a few other titles to read on it, and that's where the profit starts rolling in for Barnes & Noble.
It's not hard to see Amazon following suit. After all, it is allegedly selling the Kindle Fire for less than it costs to make, so it has effectively adopted the same business strategy already.
The low-end models for both Barnes & Noble and Amazon are ideal for bundling free with newspapers and magazines, especially as hardware prices continue to drop. E-readers might even be offered free with e-books, provided people commit to buying a minimum number per year - traditional book clubs would be wise to try this approach in conjunction with Amazon or Barnes & Noble before those two do it on their own. Similarly, it can only be a matter of time before the newspaper and magazine publishers start offering combined hardware and software bundles as standard in an attempt to entice people to sign up for digital subs.
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Web comic called it.
March 7th, 2009. The idea is actually older than the nook! Comments are gone, but some people said it's brilliant, other said it'd never work.
Makes me wonder if someone at the Times was combing the archive of LICD during work hours
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Re: Web comic called it.
http://forums.leasticoulddo.com/index.php?showtopic=29327
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I mean just look at Jay-Z getting freaked out about thieves when he is the biggest of them all.
http://www.whosampled.com/artist/Jay-Z/
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I do not recall the company name, but several years ago (10+) a company offered a computer for $100 if you signed up for their multi year service. There was a slight problem though, upon receipt of the computer the customers would cancel the subscription. This angered the company greatly and they threatened to sue etc. I never did hear what became of this, I suppose it encouraged adaption of the much hated Early Termination Fee.
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Research
I'm certain that a NYT subscription is not worth the discount on the Nook, but that doesn't mean that a few million other people don't feel different. So how exactly is piracy killing content ?
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Been waiting for this for some time...
If Amazon started offering free Kindles when you buy a bunch of books, it's just possible I'd snatch their hands off ;-)
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Not a terrible deal.
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Now if they'd start offering something I might actually want. $120 a year for People, for which I find next to useless, to save $50 on a Nook, is not a good deal.
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Capturing the RMR
I wonder just how creative companies will get with this type of business model?
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It's their accounting and marketing that suggests free hardware and pay for content.
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Can't do without
As Steve Martin once said, "I bet you read in Screw Up Your Life...I mean People magazine, I used to smoke Marijuana."
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If you are looking for a deal on a Nook, and also a sub to People, this may be for you but....
Who's to say that by the end of the first year that Nook won't have dropped on its own to 200 or less?
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AOL - Free Computers
Amazon is already doing something like this with their "With Special Offers" Kindles. You see an ad on your powered off screen when your not reading, in exchange for a discount on the initial purchase price.
They.. B&N, Amazon, etc... Should develop some sort of Netflix for books. $15 a month for all the books you can read. Sign up for 2 years in advance, free reader. You can have one book loaded on your reader at a time (along with your other books/documents)
No Shipping
400-600kb file sizes (No streaming GB's of data)
Profit!!
I have 8 people in my immediate circle with various reader hardware, and I believe all of them would sign up for a $15/month plan.
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Nook/subscription
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Spell Check
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