It's not a new rumor (it dates as far back as 2009), and it would be a departure from Amazon's strategy thus far. In December, LAUNCH reported the retail store rumor, adding that Amazon plans to sell its own branded merchandise. Amazon is better known for threatening real-world retail than for promoting it. But Amazon's moves in the past few months make the strategy seem more sensible.

Amazon's key competitor, Barnes & Noble, already has hundreds of its own stores, and they have their own showroom for the Nook readers and tablets, so the boutique model reported by Good E-Reader sounds reasonable.

Did the retail boost work for Amazon? Who knows? As usual, Amazon did not disclose how many Kindles it sold last quarter with any kind of specificity. Amazon typically spins statistics that sound good, but it won't provide hard numbers about devices.

Devices are not Amazon's core business; content is. Kindles are sold at a loss, and Amazon makes the money back on books, movies, apps and other media. The Kindle is a delivery mechanism, and putting the devices in stores would give customers a chance to try out the interface.

Amazon has avoided sales taxes by remaining a purely online retailer, giving its customers the incentive of the lowest price. But lately, sales taxes on online purchases have started to seem inevitable, as Amazon's deal with the state of California shows. Once Amazon resigns itself to sales taxes, that's one fewer reason not to bring its retail might into physical stores.

The problem most visible to users will be missing cover images. Goodreads is in the process of uploading replacements. One percent of Goodreads books will appear blank, listed as "Unknown Title" and "Unknown Author," while Goodreads looks for a new data source for them. There's a great lesson here about building a business on top of a competitor's API, but Goodreads has made the switch in the nick of time.

Goodreads has risen farther and faster than its competitors, LibraryThing and Shelfari, except by one measure: Amazon bought Shelfari. This happened over three years ago, and Amazon has yet to do much with Shelfari. It launched Kindle Profiles last year without a Shelfari in sight. But to the extent that Amazon has invested in a social network for readers, it and Goodreads are competitors.

But at the end of the day, Amazon is a retailer and Goodreads is not. Goodreads built its business on Amazon's product advertising API, so there was no problem on Amazon's end. That API required Goodreads to link books back to Amazon, so Amazon made money and Goodreads got a cut, as well as a wealth of images and data about its millions of books.

But the usage requirements of the API are picky. The most troublesome requirement is that clients cannot, "without our express prior written approval, use any Product Advertising Content on or in connection with any site or application designed or intended for use with a mobile phone or other handheld device." That's no good. Goodreads has mobile apps, and those are more convenient for checking in while reading a book than a desktop site is.

The other key restriction is that Goodreads couldn't link to competing bookstores while using Amazon's API. Users will notice that Barnes & Noble is now the most prominently displayed book seller on Goodreads, and Amazon sits in a drop-down menu with a bunch of other sites.

Why Goodreads Will Be Fine

Shelfari may have the benefit of using Amazon book data to its heart's content. But Goodreads has built a thriving social network on top of its book data, and it offers much more to users than the competitors. In addition to original content, like interviews with authors, Goodreads makes for a great Facebook Timeline app, so Facebook users can turn the books they read into life events.

But even within Goodreads itself, there are great book recommendations using true reader sentiments, not just purchase and browsing history like Amazon uses. Goodreads acquired Discovereads last year to build a "taste engine" on top of its users' data.

Goodreads also offers a social reading API of its own, so developers can access social data, reviews and discussions. For Goodreads, the books themselves are just the backend. While Amazon is surely a wealth of book data, Goodreads can repair its library on its own. It will pay license fees to Ingram, the largest U.S. wholesaler of books, and it will fill the gaps from libraries and other open data sources.

This teaches a lesson about building a service on top of another company's data, especially one that might want to compete with you. But for the long term, these growing pains will be well worth it as Goodreads makes its way independently.

Do you use Goodreads or another social reading service?

Lead photo courtesy of Tatiana Popova/Shutterstock.

45º views act as a transition between the standard top-down view and Google's new Google MapsGL, a full-3D Maps experience powered by WebGL in the browser. That part won't work on certain low-end graphics cards, but for those who can run it, Google Maps gets pretty magical. Google has good reason to push the envelope on 3D maps. Its competitors are working on magical maps of their own.

In addition to the full-3D WebGL views, desktop Google Maps also got a flyover feature for travel routes last year. When you put in travel directions, the map viewer gets a "Play" button that switches to a Google Earth 3D view and flies you from point A to point B. It's not the most useful feature in the world, but it's a nice way to check out the terrain on your route.

Google is even taking 3D mapping indoors. It's sending people with backpack-mounted Street View cameras inside local businesses, so Google can put a panoramic interior view into Google Places results. Google is also building mobile 2D maps inside buildings, including malls, airports, hotels and convention centers. When all these maps combine, Google can take you from a desktop or mobile search, down the street, into the mall, to the store, inside the store, and eventually, it wants to be the way you pay, too.

Sounds like Google has this whole business locked up, right? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Google has competitors to worry about. There's Microsoft, whose Bing Maps got interior mapping first, but it's still a distant second in terms of market share. Amazon may not have the maps, but it has unparalleled reach into shopping. And Apple has Siri, a mobile assistant that already routes around Google when able, and it has made some intriguing mapping acquisitions.

The missing piece in Google's end-to-end mobile shopping chain is the shopping part, and no Web company does shopping like Amazon. Amazon has released an augmented reality iPhone app that lets customers scan products in a store and buy them (or cheaper alternatives) on Amazon. That's a pretty serious diss to local businesses, but it makes Amazon customers happy. Also, if they're buying through Amazon Flow, they aren't paying with Google Wallet. Amazon also bought a voice recognition company last year, sparking comparisons to Apple's Siri.

For Apple's part, Siri is the piece that threatens Google. Currently, Siri searches the Web using Google when it can't find the answer itself. Apple's iOS Maps app also uses Google for now. But certain features of the Siri beta are telling. When you use Siri to search for a local business, it uses Yelp, not Google. What can we expect from later versions of Siri and iOS? Here's a hint: In November 2011, Apple bought C3 Technologies, a 3D street view and interior mapping company.

What apps, maps and Web services do you use to find your way around?

Driven in large part by the proliferation of tablets and e-readers, digital book lending is on the rise, according to OverDrive, a leading supplier of digital content to U.S. libraries. The company, which partnered with Amazon for its Kindle lending program, reported recently that it saw a 130% increase in traffic to its "virtual branch" websites last year. OverDrive works with 18,000 libraries to offer e-books and other digital content to members.

The Kindle Fire may not be an iPad killer, but it sure is mimicking Apple's early tablet sales growth. The device was the top-selling item on Amazon over the holiday season, with its e-ink counterparts not too far behind.

Mobile devices like tablets and smartphones have played no small role in the growth in library lending of e-books. OverDrive reports a 22% increase in traffic from such devices. In total, traffic to the company's virtual branches double from 2010 to 2011, to 1.6 billion page views. In addition to iPads and Kindles, the OverDrive borrowed e-books were accessed from Android devices, Nooks, iPods, Windows Phone and Blackberry smartphones, and the Sony Reader.

Files sent with Send to Kindle go to the user's Kindle Library, and they can be downloaded on the e-ink Kindle models as well as the iOS Kindle app. The last-read page, bookmarks, notes and highlights are synchronized automatically, except for PDFs. The Kindle Fire is not listed. Support for Mac is "coming soon."

This is actually a major feature. It makes sending Word documents, PDFs or text snippets to Kindle almost effortless. It turns Kindle into a powerful content-shifting service. It was relatively easy to send devices to Kindle via email before, and that feature still works, but now any file can be sent with two clicks, and any thing that can be printed can be sent to Kindle instead.

Content shifting was one of our top trends of 2011 because many impressive solutions for reading later popped up this year on different platforms. The Kindle service was already noteworthy for content shifting due to its whisper-syncing of books and other content, but now it's easy to send virtually any document to the Kindle.

Do you have a Kindle device? Which one(s) do you use?

Think carefully: all six have come out in opposition to the bill, which would put tight restrictions on Internet firms in an effort to enforce U.S. copyright laws (although some firms took more convincing stands than others). At least two of the companies, Google and Amazon, have said they may go dark to protest the bill.

If you guessed GoDaddy, which had a public dust up after initially supporting SOPA, you're right. Sort of. GoDaddy's PAC leads in percentage, giving 52.9% of the $38,750 it has given during this election cycle to Representatives that have signed on to co-sponsor SOPA and Senators who are co-sponsoring PIPA.

• Microsoft $88,500 (20.9%)
• eBay $32,750 (35.5%)
• Google $29,000 (47.5%)
• GoDaddy $20,500 (52.9%)
• Yahoo! $11,000 (35.5%)
• Amazon $4,000 (42.1%)

We contacted all six companies asking for comment and requested they get back to us by 3 pm ET/noon PT on Thursday. All of the companies missed that deadline, but we'll update if any of them get back to us.

ReadWriteWeb analyzed Federal Election Commission data maintained by OpenSecret.org. While the reports are for the current election cycle, they do not list the dates of individual donations, making it hard to determine if the donations were made before or after a lawmaker signed on to co-sponsor the bills.

SOPA, and its Senate counerpart, PIPA, would force search engines and websites to block links to sites that are listed as being "dedicated" to copyright infringement. SOPA has been widely endorsed by traditional media companies, but Web firms and free speech advocates have likened it to government-enforced censorship.

Outspoken Supporters Received PAC Money

All of the donations were made in the 2012 election cycle, and individual donations ranged from $1,000 to a high of $10,000 given to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. by Microsoft. Only two SOPA/PIPA sponsoring lawmakers received donations from all six company PACs: Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.

Hatch, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that unanimously approved PIPA in May, has been a long-time backer of the bill and its earlier versions.

"Fake pharmaceuticals threaten people's lives. Stolen movies, music and other products put many out of work," Hatch said in a statement posted on his Web site in May. "This is why protecting property rights is a critical imperative and is why we've come together in introducing this common-sense bill."

Goodlatte, meanwhile, made comments supporting SOPA as early as April, but didn't sign on as a co-sponsor until October.

"It is tempting to think of crimes involving counterfeiting and piracy, or intellectual property (IP) theft, as victimless, but this is simply untrue," he said a day after signing on as co-sponsor. "Piracy denies individuals who have invested in the creation and production of these goods a return on their investment thus reducing the incentive to invest in innovative products and new creative works. The end result is the loss of American jobs."

Among the SOPA/PIPA supporting lawmakers who were the biggest beneficiaries of donations from the PACs of six companies analyzed:

• Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah $15,500
• Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. $14,000
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. $12,000
• Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas $11,000
• Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif. $10,000
• Rep. Mary Bono Mack, R-Calif. $7,000
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. $7,000
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. $7,000
• Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. $7,000
• Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. $6,500

A complete breakdown of donations by each company's PAC to lawmakers is available.

Amazon increased its monthly funding for KDP Select from $500,000 to $700,000 this month after the strong showing. KDP authors earned $1.70 per borrow. The top 10 KDP Select authors saw a 30% increase from lending on top of the royalties they earned from sales of the same titles. Amazon's end-run around Big Publishing shows promise for authors.

The Kindle Lending Library itself launched on November 2. It's available to Amazon Prime members. It has tight restrictions - users can only borrow one book per month - so 295,000 titles in one month means 295,000 people.

For authors in the KDP Select lending program, the numbers are great, but Amazon is characteristically cagey about other specifics. It won't share the exact size of the sales bump KDP Select authors got over non-lending KDP authors. It doesn't disclose how many books were lent in the Lending Library program overall.

The biggest bugbear of them all for Amazon reporters is the specific number of Kindles sold. Amazon will report percentage growth in Kindle sales, but they never disclose exactly how many devices are in people's hands. Still, we know this: 295,000 or so people borrowed Kindle books from independent authors last month, and some of those authors made lots of money.

Do you have an e-reader? Which one? Do you read on it often?

Apple's in-app purchasing rules prevent e-book sellers from offering stores in their native apps (without giving Apple a 30% cut). The route around that was to include a link to the Web store inside the native reader app. Last July, Apple forced Amazon and other e-reader apps to remove this link, so users of e-book platforms other than Apple's iBooks must buy their books in the browser, in a separate place from where they read.

Amazon's first strike against this rule was to launch the Web-based Kindle Cloud Reader, so that users could read and buy books from the browser on any device, not just the iPad. It's a nice experience, but the native Kindle app's performs better and is more useful offline, even though it doesn't offer direct access to the bookstore.

In December, Amazon brought the Kindle Fire Newsstand to the iOS app, so iPad users could receive subscription publications from Amazon in the Kindle app, in competition with Apple's own Newsstand. After beefing up the Kindle app, the new standalone Kindle Store Web app better serves Kindle users who want to use the native reader instead of the browser-based one.

Apple and Amazon come at each other head-on in this market. Their approaches are basically opposite. Apple wants controls over the media available on its devices, because content is an inclusive service it provides to make its profitable devices more attractive. Apple breaks even on content, but it wants to lock users into its devices with the convenience of that service.

Amazon's business is selling content on razor-thin margins. Its Kindle devices are the service, while the content is the product. That's why Amazon offers so much support for iOS devices, even though it just launched its own Kindle Fire tablet. Amazon loses $2.70 on each Kindle Fire, but it's sure to make up the loss in media purchases. Sales to iOS users are pure profit for Amazon. The new iPad Kindle Store is its best possible solution for its customers allowed on Apple's devices.

Do you read e-books? What's your set-up?

Traditional Customer Relationship Management is dead meat, Searls argues. Companies should stop collecting data about their customers. Right now, before the customers revolt! This populist vision of revolt is balanced out a little by Searls' vision of what's likely to come next. You can get the picture from the title of his forthcoming book, The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge. It seems crazy, but his view of what the future will bring with regard to customer data is fascinating to consider.

"Customers naturally see this trend as a gross invasion of their privacy and are starting to resist providing accurate information--or any information at all.

But the main reason for vendors to quit this practice is not that it's bad manners. It's that businesses soon will no longer own the data anyway--customers will. And when that happens, vendors will end up reaping greater benefits than they do now."

As someone fascinated by the possibilities for innovation, I am very hesitent when I read people cheering the revolt of users against the collection of their data. I hope that data collection will be done in a positive way and will lead to big wins for everyone.

It's not clear that's going to happen though. Behavioral marketing trailblazer and Tacoda founder Dave Morgan once told me that no one had yet found a way to articulate the value proposition of aggregate data analysis to end consumers because there wasn't one yet. No one had really built it, people were generally focused on sleazy short term wins at the expense of the consumer. It is the job of startups to build something compelling, he says.

Searls believes this will happen when consumers are in control over their own data. He thinks that's going to be a net win for the consumer and the companies that sell to them.

"Here's why," he writes. "When customers own and control their own data, demand will drive supply more efficiently than supply currently drives demand."

By that he means that satisfaction of real consumer demand, demand felt my consumers in control in a market that strives to delight them, will be more efficient than demand that gets manufactured by manipulative advertising driven by supply that must be sold.

A new infographic from G+/Gerson Lehrman Group shows these and a few other interesting trends too. For example, Dell was able to cut service calls by posting video how-tos on its support site. This and other TV oddities can be found below.

Kindles flew off Amazon's digital shelves at a rate of over 1 million per week during the month of December and occupied the top three slots on the company's site-wide bestseller list. The #1 position was held by the Kindle Fire, which was also the most gifted and wished-for item on the entire site, according to data released today by Amazon.

Indie Authors on the Rise

Found amidst the company's holiday sales stats are a few clues about what the future of publishing might entail. In addition to obvious choices like Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography, readers have been downloading books by independent authors at a growing pace.

In 2011, the first and fourth best-selling ebooks were by indie authors who published their work via Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing service. No longer are readers limited to offerings from big publishing houses. Thanks to the explosion in e-books and the devices they're best read on, unknown authors can become best-sellers like never before.

2012: Another Huge Year For Tablets

It was no mistake that Amazon released its media tablet just in time for the holiday season, and at less than half the cost of the iPad. The device is the fastest-growing tablet since the first generation iPad, and that growth shows no signs of stopping.

The early success of the Kindle Fire closes out another big year for tablets and precedes what is sure to be yet another one. Apple is expected to unveil the next generation of the iPad at some point in 2012, possibly in multiple sizes and almost certainly with a smaller price tag. Android is pushing its own platform forward with Ice Cream Sandwich and we'll undoubtedly see a host of new ICS-friendly devices next year.

We'll also see the launch of Windows 8 next year, a new generation of Microsoft's operating system that will offer a seamless experience across dekstops, tablets and smartphones. How well it will catch on remains to be seen, but for Windows users, an affordable Windows 8-based tablet could be hard to resist.

In addition to the 400 magazines and newspapers, the iPad app can also now display "print replica textbooks," which are more like giant PDFs than interactive applications. All iOS devices, not just the iPad, now support the Send-to-Kindle feature, allowing users to send documents to the device by email. They can also open PDFs from email or the browser in the Kindle app.

The Kindle Fire itself is off to a good start, at least in terms of sales. It's the fastest growing tablet since the iPad. Amazon has also released the first over-the-air update for that device, fixing some of the performance problems.

The Verge has a nice hands-on review of the new Kindle Fire update with photos and video.

It's a compromised device, and it's positioned as a service, not a dedicated hardware product like the iPad. Rather than making money off the device, Amazon wants to put the device into as many hands as possible in order to make money on the content.

The Kindle app for iOS is Amazon's extension of that service onto Apple's platform. Apple's own Newsstand has given publishers a major bump since the launch of iOS 5 in October. The Kindle app is popular on the iPad for e-books, though, and Amazon hopes to divert some attention away from Apple's Newsstand with today's update.

Download Kindle for iOS from the iTunes Store.

Do you read on a tablet? Which one do you use?

This year we're pleased to etch a fifth name onto the Best BigCo trophy (although like our own little company, the trophy is virtual). Our Best BigCo of 2011 has been around since the Dot Com era, but what's most impressive is how it has disrupted entirely new markets over the past year. Our Best BigCo for 2011 is...

Founded in 1994 by the impressive Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com launched in 1995 as an online bookstore. It took a good decade for it to fully establish its e-commerce operations. The diversification of Amazon.com essentially started in March 2006, with the launch of an online storage service called Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). Later that year it launched Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a set of server farms that could be used by other businesses. These moves turned out to be prescient, as cloud computing has since turned into a huge market. More importantly, it gave Amazon.com the infrastructure and technical nous to become a direct competitor to Google, Apple and Microsoft.

We've chosen Amazon.com as our Best BigCo this year because, simply put, it lived up to its hype. It launched a number initiatives this year and all of them have worked out. Here are some of Amazon.com's biggest achievements in 2011:

1. Its Kindle product (first launched in 2007) evolved and continues to dominate the eReader market. It also launched an eBook lending service.
2. It took on Apple by launching a low-priced tablet called Kindle Fire (including a new browser called Silk). The Kindle Fire is significant to Amazon.com because it's a media platform - for the books, apps, videos and over-content that it sells.
3. It consistently added to the Prime video catalog, making it a very competitive offering compared to market leaders Netflix and Hulu.
4. It furthered the cause of HTML5 in publishing, by becoming the first major company to challenge Apple's stranglehold over the iOS App Store. It did this by releasing an HTML5 version of Kindle, to try to get around Apple's 30% cut of all revenue from iOS apps.
5. Its Amazon Cloud Drive is a competitive consumer cloud offering, at least on a par with Apple's iCloud (which launched months after Amazon) and Microsoft's SkyDrive.
6. It has gone from strength to strength with the aforementioned business cloud platforms, S3 and EC2. Collectively known as Amazon Web Services (AWS), that division is closing in on $1 billion a year in revenue. AWS did have some downtime this year, however.
7. It launched Appstore For Android this year, an important step forward for both Android users and developers.
8. It even got a bit fancy, with the November launch of an augmented reality shopping app for the iPhone called Flow.

As you can see, Amazon.com has had a stellar product year. Although it should be noted that the Kindle Fire and other developments have made a dent in its profits. That won't worry Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos though, who has proven himself this year to be one of the Web's leading visionaries. He has pushed Amazon.com into areas that nobody would've predicted back in 1995.

The Runners-up

Apple undeniably had a great year too and is a close runner-up to Amazon.com for Best BigCo. Apple released iPhone 5 and iPad 2, both well-regarded and innovative (Siri in particular caught peoples imagination). Apple also continued to dominate the mobile app market and launched iCloud.

Google and Facebook both had strong years too. Google+ and Chrome are two big mainstream products that Google launched or rapidly evolved this year. In the end though, we felt that Google still has a lot to prove with those two platforms (social and browser, respectively). Likewise with Facebook, although it innovated impressively this year with Timeline, smart lists and frictionless sharing (to name just a few of its iterations in 2011), it remains to be seen how its huge user base reacts to the new-look Facebook. Most of its users don't have Timeline yet, for example.

Honorable Mentions

Although Microsoft didn't have any breakthrough hit products in 2011, it continued to at least keep pace with its competitors on the Web. For example, Bing made solid progress as a search engine alternative to Google.com. Twitter had another strong growth year and its various redesigns have been brave and largely successful. Although eBay dropped the ball with the Skype acquisition, it had a good year in its core e-commerce market. In the enterprise space, IBM, Oracle and Salesforce.com all had good years.

Also Rans

The once mighty Yahoo had a terrible year, as did HP. AOL has been trying to turn itself around, but hasn't been helped by power struggles and public in-fighting amongst its media properties. Adobe and Mozilla both continue gamely on, but they're struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

Your Thoughts?

To end on a positive note, there's no doubt in our minds that Amazon.com is a worthy Best BigCo. Its innovation and determination to challenge the likes of Apple and Google has been fascinating to watch. Do you agree with our choice? Let us know in the comments.

If indie authors are willing to sell their e-book exclusively through Amazon for 90 days, those books become available through the Kindle Owners' Lending Library. Each time a writer's book is loaned through the system, they get a cut of revenue on top of the royalties they get from book sales.

Who Needs Big Publishing Houses?

Not too long ago, the only way for an author to get significant reach and income was to get on board with a major publishing house, no small feat for any author. Today, thanks to the spread of e-books and programs like this, the barriers to entry are much lower and the financial pay-off keeps getting more attractive.

Last year, Amazon increased the revenue share it offers Kindle authors to 70%, likely in anticipation of the launch of Apple's iBooks store.

By offering an extra stream of revenue via KDP Select, Amazon boosts those profits for writers while making its own lending library seem more attractive to them. After all, why participate in a program that doesn't generate any revenue, especially if you're the little guy (or gal)?

Amazon has set aside $6 million for the fund in 2012, but wasted no time getting things started. They've already pledged $500,000 for the month of December.

Last year, the e-commerce giant announced that e-book editions of best-sellers had outsold their printed counterparts on the site for the first time. Then, earlier this year, the company revealed that it had sold more e-books than paperback and hardcover books combined.

Its line of Kindle e-readers was already doing quite well when the company launched its full-color, Android-based media tablet the Kindle Fire. As the holidays approach, the $200 device is expected to land in the hands of many more consumers. On Black Friday alone, Amazon sold 400% more Kindles that it did on the same day last year.

Media reports have pointed to the existence of such an investigation since last year, but yesterday an Justice Department official publicly acknowledged it, saying, "We are also investigating the electronic book industry, along with the European Commission and the states attorneys general." That's right, Europe and a handful of U.S. states are concerned about e-book pricing as well.

Authorities are looking into allegations that Apple took this route as a way of challenging Amazon, which had started selling e-books at prices lower than most paperbacks, something the publishers view as a potential threat to their traditional revenue streams.

Governments weren't the first to raise their eyebrows at the practice. These investigations come after several class action lawsuits were filed against Apple and the major publishing houses for alleged price-fixing.

For publishers, having prices set higher means more than just increased revenue. It helps them delay the cannibalization of print sales, which still make up the majority of their income as less lucrative e-books grow in popularity. For Apple, such an arrangement with the publishers enabled them to launch an e-book marketplace to compete with Amazon and better market its iPad tablet as a device that's ideal for reading and content consumption.

For consumers, however, the pricing model doesn't make as much sense. In many cases, people end up paying just as much for an e-book as they would for a paperback. That doesn't quite add up considering e-books forgo the costs of printing and distributing.