Back in February 2009, I asked:
does Amazon have an "upgrade your books to Kindle" like Apple does for iTunes plus?
— James Tauber (@jtauber) February 9, 2009
Well, apparently they are going to very soon and it's called Kindle MatchBook.
Interestingly, back in June 2009:
ooh, it looks like Amazon does now tell you which of the print books you've ever bought are available on Kindle. sadly less than 10% for me.
— James Tauber (@jtauber) June 29, 2009
I can't find if Amazon still shows you that number.
Based on a recent import into Goodreads, I've purchased just over 1,500 books from Amazon in the last 17 years. That does NOT seem to include Kindle books.
According to Amazon.com I have 277 books in my Kindle collection but ignoring the included user guides, etc, it's about 250.
It will be interesting to see what the pricing ends up being and also what percentage of my physical books (from Amazon) are now available on Kindle.
Combining these: if Amazon gives a single click "purchase available Kindle editions of all your purchased books", I wonder what the dollar amount will be.
As publishers have to opt-in to the Kindle MatchBook program, I guess the number might start off low and grow over time.
There doesn't seem to be an easy way to see how many previous purchases of mine are available now (you have to view the list in lots of 10) and no single button (with a price) to get all available matches.
They do say they're continually adding new titles, though (as I suggested above they would).
So far most of my matches are $2.99 but that's a huge reduction on the normal Kindle price.
I can't quite work out the order in which my matched purchases are being shown. If it's in (reverse) purchase order, they don't have many of my books.
Wow, I should have just kept loading more as there are only 36 books matching so far (out of 1,500+)
A couple of days later and the number of matching books is now 39.
Up to 40 books matching now!
(yes, that was a sarcastic exclamation point)
Almost a year later and only 45 of the 1,500+ books I've bought on Amazon are available through Kindle MatchBook.
Okay, so I keep joking about how few of the books I've bought on Amazon are available on Kindle MatchBook. But I just ordered a book and Amazon immediately offered me the Kindle version for $2.99 instead of the usual $14.85. No-brainer.