Waterstones to sell the Kindle

The news that Waterstones is to sell the Amazon Kindle amazes me. I understand the need to keep afloat, but selling a device that almost certainly ensure no future revenue makes little long-term sense.

From Eoin Purcell's Blog- "Unless the customer buys e-books on the company’s own in-store WiFi network, Waterstones gets no cut of future sales. Effectively, the book chain is shepherding customers over to Amazon. The sheer convenience of being able to shop for new titles directly from their Kindle means most of them are unlikely to darken the doors of a real-world bookshop very often in the future..."

Comments

[Bug Blatter]

Waterstones has to find ways to get people to come into its stores and buy Kindle books over its own wifi network then.

Burying its head in the sand by ignoring the Kindle won't help it to survive in the new world; it has to find a way to generate revenue from it.

To be honest they're probably not long for this world, but at least they're trying.

[Neil]

I thought this was announced some months back - I was already under the impression that Waterstones sold the Kindle.

Waterstones will not make enough from the Kindle to survive, and I would guess its other sources of revenue are vanishing rapidly; like Bug, I would not expect Waterstones to be around much longer. Then again, I'm surprised that HMV is still around either.