Monday, December 14, 2009

Amazon's Book Upgrade


Sometimes a thing can stare you in the face, but you just don't see it. Such was the case with my discovering Amazon's book upgrade. As explained here, for a nominal extra fee certain books can be bought as a regular purchase, plus be available to you online. You can highlight the text, make notes, print it out, etc. This works great for how-to books, text books, etc.

For example, Amazon is selling my how-to book on fiction, Getting Into Character, for $10.85--a great price off the regular retail of $15.95. For an additional $1.59, still far under retail price, you can buy the upgrade.

Not all books are available for upgrade. If a certain book is available, you'll see the upgrade sentence right below the price information. Like this text, taken from the Getting Into Character page:
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List Price: $15.95
Price: $10.85 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
Details
You Save: $5.10 (32%)

Upgrade this book for $1.59 more, and you can read, search, and annotate every page online.

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The upgrade page gives details on how to buy upgraded books, and offers one for free, so you can see how it works. There's also an Amazon Upgrade store that you can peruse for available titles.

What do you think of this feature? Anyone ever used it?
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2 comments:

Sheila Deeth said...

Fascinating. I'd not noticed it before.

Tom Gregory said...

This feature will not work if the book is only available as a print version. Your book is available in the Kindle format and therefore all the features of the book upgrade will work.