Why I Won’t Buy A Kindle

I really want a Kindle.  Every fiber in my body wants to visit Amazon.com, log-in, add the Kindle to my shopping basket, elect the overnight delivery option, and complete the transaction.

But, I don’t and I won’t. It’s not the money, battery life, form factor, selection of books, or features. Nope it’s something much simpler; there’s no easy way for me to convert my existing book purchases to the Kindle.

I have dozens of books that I’ve purchased on Amazon that are also available for the Kindle. In order to get those books on the Kindle I’d have to repurchase them AGAIN. Sorry, it’s not going to happen. I want to be able to access Freakonomics whenever I want. I re-read books often. I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve read Where The Suckers Moon. I’ve done a preliminary look at the Kindle catalog. It would cost roughly $1800 for me to re-purchase every book I own into the Kindle format. This is insane, no?

When the iPod came out I didn’t have to repurchase all my CDs. Instead I CONVERTED them to MP3s and synced them with the iPod. This made spending more than $300.00 for an iPod a simple proposition.  I could take all of my music with me in one little light weight tool for a relatively fair fee.

I can’t imagine that I’m the only person who feels this way.

Would it be that hard for Amazon to do the following:

1. Scan your Amazon purchase history and let you “upgrade” to the Kindle format for free (ideally) or a nominal fee. They have all of the data – it doesn’t seem that hard.
2. Allow you to trade in your books for the Kindle format. You would go to Amazon.com select the books you are converting, pay in advance (nominal fee), and produce a shipping manifest with a barcode. You would mail/FedEx in your books along with the manifest. Amazon would match the books up against the manifest and assuming everything matches up, scan the barcode which would credit your account for the downloads. The books would then be donated to schools, libraries, and charities. Everybody wins in this situation.

I’m ready to buy a Kindle. Amazon just needs to make it easier for me transfer my library to it so that I can really take 100s, if not 1000s, of books with me wherever I go.

Amazon, are you listening?  Let’s talk.