Munsey’s Technosnarl

He just isn’t funny enough.  Though, good to know that nobody else bothered refuting what this jackass said a few days ago, implying a certain lack of interest.

But, here we go, via the SAI Insider, another from the Henry Blodget-backed venture that still swears, up and down, Amazon is losing money on Kindle books.

Specifically, the wholesale price paid by Amazon to Rosetta Stone books (the publisher) is likely close to those paid for other comparable older e-book titles.  On older books, we estimate that Amazon nets between $0 to $1 in profit per Kindle copy sold. (Amazon loses money on new books).

They claim to have sourced this.  Yeah, voices from the beehive.

First: who the hell is RosettaStone Books?  RosettaStone makes language-learning DVDs and sells them via mall kiosks.  RosettaBooks, whom the guy was maybe thinking of, is Arthur Klebanoff’s ebook venture, that did get into a bit of litigation with Random House, won two rounds with a former Clinton staffer defending them, then faded as the first generation of ebook devices died.

Second, by “newer,” are we talking mass-market paperback?  ‘Cuz… no, not losing money.  Older–is that the public domain books? ‘Cuz Amazon’s making as much as $4 a pop on those.  Soft covers?  What the hell do you mean, ‘older?’

Tags: Devices, Ebooks, RosettaBooks, Silicon Alley Insider

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 20th, 2009 at 2:20 am and is filed under Devices, Ebooks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.