Digital books can be a heck of a lot more convenient than paper books. You can carry a thousand titles in your pocket and sync your reading progress between a phone, eReader, tablet or other device so you can pick up reading on your phone where you left off on your tablet.
But eBooks don’t look as good on a bookshelf.
Amazon has a new program designed to offer the best of both worlds: buy a print edition of a book from Amazon, and you can get the eBook for $2.99 or less.
When the Kindle MatchBook program launches in October, only covers about 10,000 titles, but books from big name authors including Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, and Neil Gaiman are included.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has offered digital media as an added bonus for customer who buy physical media. Early this year the company launched Amazon AutoRip, which lets you buy a CD from Amazon and get a free MP3 copy that you can download or stream from Amazon for free.
Books in the Kindle MatchBook program won’t be free, but priced at $0.99, $1.99, or $2.99 they’ll be much cheaper than the usual selling price for books from most well-known authors.
Like Amazon’s AutoRip service, Kindle MatchBook doesn’t just cover new book purchases. You’ll be able to get discounts on eBooks for print books purchased from Amazon from 1995 and later. Just go into your order history to find titles you’ve already purchased.