Los Angeles Times now on Amazon's Kindle

We've been Kindled! You can now subscribe to the electronic edition of the L.A. Times and download it wirelessly each day to Amazon.com's e-book reader.

The Times joins 19 other papers -- including the New York Times, the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal -- now available on the Kindle, which receives and displays books, blogs, magazines and newspapers. The L.A. Times will cost $9.99 a month. Other monthly e-newspaper subscriptions run from $5.99 -- for Amazon's hometown paper, the Seattle Times -- to $14.99 for Le Monde. Amazon also offers more than 135,000 books.

So, is this going to cure the newspaper industry's business problems? Probably not -- some analysts are skeptical that consumers will cough up money for material that they can get, at no charge, on the iPhone, BlackBerry and other Web-enabled mobile devices. "Businesses that have attempted to charge for content have met with a lot of resistance," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. "It's a limited market for people who will pay for content that they can view for free elsewhere."

Amazon has been circumspect on how much revenue it generates from e-books, compared with the dead-tree versions that it's become the master of selling. The company also has not disclosed how many Kindles it has sold. Analysts have pegged that figure to be anywhere between 250,000 and 330,000 since the device hit the market in November, based on an article in Digitimes quoting production estimates from a Taiwanese screen manufacturer (the article is available only to paying subscribers, but is quoted in this blog post by Tim O'Reilly).

Whatever the figure, sales have been robust enough for Amazon to lower its price for the e-book by $40 to $359 in May, thanks to high production volume.

Now if only the Kindle could make a cup of coffee to go with that morning paper.

-- Alex Pham

Photo courtesy of the L.A. Times

Comments

[Andrew Warner]

Alex, I read the LA Times on my Treo. Your mobile version is sharp.

[Fake teams]

I doubt the Kindle can save newspapers because those who are avid readers, the Kindle's target, are likely already subscribing if the LAT is their daily paper. I got the NYT delivered but dropped the delivery for the Kindle version. The savings ($40 a month versus $14 on the kIndle) made electronic delivery way too good to pass-up. I can't imgaine having the clutter of a print edition anymore.

I do think the electronic delivery could help the newspaper industry, though, but it would have to figure a way to get a Kindle-like device into its subscriber's hands. With the financial straits the industry is in, I don't know how it would find the capital to do so.

Nevermind the legacy costs associated with the a demise of the current newspaper production and delivery model.

[DW]

I am a current L.A. Times Sunday Edition subscriber. I had not been a daily subscriber because I just didn't want to deal with the large amount of paper I would have to recycle (I have to drive to a recycling center because there is no recycling available in my condo building... that's another long story). For daily news, I set up RSS feeds on my computers.

I, along with many others on Amazon's discussion boards wrote the Times last month asking for a Kindle edition so that we could become a daily subscribers. I know others were asking about it as early as January. I'm very happy the Times made it happen and I began my daily subscription yesterday. Having a Kindle subscription to the L.A. Times saves me money, saves my gas from driving to the recycling center so often and I don't have to have my laptop with me all of the time.

Thank you.

[newsinusa.com]

Journalistic concerns over the internet in many ways mirror the 20th Century fears of Silent vs Sound for movies in Hollywood, the advent of Radio in the 1930s which was also perceived as a threat by the newspaper industry, the emergence of firstly television in the 1950s at the expense of Cinema, and then secondly VHS tapes in the 1980s (which was also a threat to TV).

Radio, Cinema and TV have all survived and show no signs of going the way of the Dinosaurs.

So long as there is money to be made and there is a day of rest Newspapers and books will continue to be produced but suggest the publishers, editors and writers who inhabit this particular medium will need to adapt to the changes in the World so that they stay relevant to the contemporary audience.

[Amazon Kindle]

I received my Kindle today and I have to say "NO" to the haters. This is a killer reader. Here are some pros and cons:

Pros
1. The reader response time is excellent and the display is crisp and clear.
2. The interface is extremely intuitive and well-designed.
3. Shopping in the Kindle store is extremely easy and relatively fast
4. Page and menu navigation are easy and well thought out.
5. The mp3 player works very well so audio books would be great as well
6. In general it's a great design in perhaps not the most beautiful package.
7. Great non-skid backing

Cons:
1. The keyboard can be a bit slow to respond while shopping.
2. It's a tad uncomfortable to hold without the book cover but I'll manage.
3. Pricey

All things considered, I'm extremely pleased with the Kindle. The device is already registered and it is ready to go as soon as you unpack it.

[Show me]

LA Times: please show us the Kindle edition of the LA Times on this web site! I am considering a subscription to the Kindle edition, but don't want to buy a Kindle and then discover that important Times content is missing.

For example, how many photos are in the Kindle edition? Does the Kindle edition include local news, including Orange County? How many and what type of articles are in the print edition but not the Kindle edition?

If you posted the Kindle edition here, these questions and more would be answered.

[Alex Pham]

Great suggestion, ShowMe. We'll look into it!

[lucassoscan]

Newspapers and magazines seem to sell well on Kindle. Not only books have gone digital...things are looking up for the publishing industry now. I am a hungarian guy but i do hope that Kindle will be a serious game-changerin Europe as well. My only problem with the Kindle is that blogs are overpriced. They should be priced at around 50 cents a month. If that happened, blogs would sell thousands of downloads per day...Long live the new technology and the new business model of Amazon.