Why Don’t I Get an E-book For Free When I Buy a Print Book from Amazon?

There are compelling reasons to own a print book you want to read, AND to have an e-book version to go along with it. It is devilishly hard to save all your notes and clipping when you have a print copy, and you can’t admire a book on your bookshelf or share it with a friend (in most cases) when you have an e-book copy.

So what gives? Why not have both? And since the content is the same, why isn’t one of those copies FREE?

“Why” you don’t get a free digital version of a physical book that you purchase from Amazon is a reflection of the “profit motive” at work. As with many innovative ideas that Amazon has promoted regarding e-reading and e-books, the final decision on this sort of thing lies with the publisher of the book. For example, some Kindle books can’t be loaned to a friend because the publisher won’t allow it. As you may know, Amazon’s aggressive pricing for popular books on Kindle has come under control of the publisher as well. So a “free” Kindle version of a hard copy book you purchased can only come with the publisher’s blessing.

The Kindle MatchBook program is a great example of this principle. Some, but certainly not all, hardcopy books you buy from Amazon qualify for MatchBook. Take as an example John Grisham’s recent “The Rooster Bar.” You can buy a hardback, a paperback or a Kindle version, so the publisher could offer the Kindle version for $2.99 for purchasers of the physical book, but they don’t. Random House is just not interested. Amazon, in its pursuit of “seamless” bookselling, came up with MatchBook, but they have to persuade publishers to participate. So far, not many have done so.

You can discover which of your print purchases qualify for MatchBook by following the link above to the MatchBook page. You will see a button that reads “Find Your Kindle MatchBook Titles.” Once you click that and sign in, Amazon generates a list of books you’ve purchased that qualify for the MatchBook program, which means that you can purchase the Kindle edition of that book for $2.99 or less. When I pushed the button, after years of purchasing books at Amazon, two titles came up. You read that right: two (2). So I might rephrase your question to begin “Why can’t you get a discounted Kindle book…”

Quick bit of history: there used to be a business named “Shelfie” that allowed you to create a shelf online of books you currently own and then provided information about free or discounted prices for the ebook versions from sellers. I say “used to be”: Shelfie was bought out last year by Amazon competitor Kobo.