SI (YC W10) gives newspapers switching to Kindle 1 year of free service | Hacker News Reader

SI (YC W10) gives newspapers switching to Kindle 1 year of free service

seeinginteractive.com

If you want to contact people from the newspaper business, I suspect prefacing your pitch with a picture of a burning newspaper is not very wise.

Haha, maybe true. But we posted this blog from inside the 63rd largest newspaper in the country which is launching our services tomorrow. I suspect that they choose our company precisely because we're not afraid to try new things.

Crazy!! Would a newspaper that does this have to totally abandon paper distribution? As in: there would be no way for a person to go buy the Sunday issue of XYZ daily, if they happen to be vacationing in XYZ?

Perhaps there could be installed a paperbox which is actually an on-demand 3G printer? Basically, "you swipe your RFID dongle, it pulls down a PDF of your favorite newspaper and prints it out, and debits your account." It could be a third-party service that newspapers subscribe to, subsidizing the boxes/paper/toner in exchange for having their paper printable at them.

With Kindle's free 3G downloads, is that really a disadvantage?

The goal is to find a newspaper who will swing for the fences. In year two, the cost savings for a typical daily newspaper will be significant. In some cases, we believe it will double profit margins.

Since this went up on Hacker News we've had interest from two newspapers. We'll see how it goes.

Well, obviously if you have a kindle, it's not a problem - but not everyone has a kindle :) So I'm just wondering if there would be a way to buy the paper outside of signing up for a 1 year contract and getting a free kindle. I mean, if they want to sell me a paper for $1.75 and throw in a free Kindle ... sounds good to me, but in that case the profitability of this plan comes into question ;)

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for someone trying the idea - it sounds like a pretty awesome, and environmentally friendly way to go for the future of newspapers. Just playing the devil's advocate.

On the other hand, I've come to despise 1- and 2-year contracts, thanks to cell-phone service providers ;)

There is still so much to be done in the newspaper/magazine business.. Great idea and I hope it succeeds.

I recently bought a Kindle and find it convenient to read a NYT on it despite having a small screen and not being able to scan whole pages for content quickly.

great offer for papers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com