Many are wondering why, especially since the CEO in the past has talked about Amazon like it was the Devil in a shark's form. He says he still thinks they are "a formidable competitor" and "really good at mailing books" (meow!!), but they just have to sell the best ereader to serve their public, and that's the Kindle.
I can't see they get much out of it though, surely the margin is razor-thin, and I hear they don't get any affiliate fee for books sold through the device. Which would have been a fair deal, even on a reduced basis, I think Amazon would get many more bookstores to sell Kindles if this was the case.
By the way, I was surfing on my iPad, and I wanted to see if the Kindle was already in stock at Waterstones. But their web site went to Mobile Mode and showed only books:
What's worse: there was no way to shift to full browser mode! Really stupid.
So I went and installed the excellent alternative-culture browser iCab for iPad, and in settings I told it to represent itself as Safari for Mac instead of a mobile browser. Problem solved:
Sigh, I have to get a Kindle Fire HD, because the text-to-speech is much better than before, and dang Amazon has left it (and any audio) out of the e-ink Kindle models altogether! Lord knows I don't need one more tablet, but currently it's the only way to get my Kindle books read to me when I want that. (Lord, I wish I had a few dozen customers which were as good as I am a customer for Amazon. Apart from all the other things I buy from them, I have almost every Kindle ever made!)
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