Amazon Announces Kindle Matchbook

Amazon’s new service will let Kindle users purchase discounted digital versions of print books they already purchased from Amazon. Not every title is available in the Matchbook service; nonetheless, Amazon claims that over 10,000 books will be available when the service launches in October. It remains unclear whether publishers will buy into the idea, but it speaks to an important consumer desire to unite the digital with the tangible – and this could be a very powerful way to encourage consumers to buy into the tablets, while simultaneously uniting print and digital book collections.