I've been getting a wave of contacts from book publishers asking if I'd like a review copy of their latest title and would I consider doing a review of it on one of my blogs or podcasts. I LOVE books and have an ever growing library of them, but lately I'm finding that the only time I have to read books is when I'm on a plane or train heading somewhere, but when I'm there I'm rarely reading them in the paper variety but rather on my Amazon Kindle.
So, what I'm wondering is why are all these book publishers spending lots of money to print, pack and ship review copies out when I'd be just as happy (if not MORE happy) to receive it electronically directly to my Kindle?
I don't know the details on how a book gets formatted for the Kindle and in the Kindle store, but what I DO know is that I can e-mail any PDF file to a special e-mail address for my personal Kindle and it'll show up on it. Some conversion goes on behind the scenes and it costs me dimes to do so.
I can control who has access to send to that address and I'd be more then willing to give it to a publisher if they were going to use it to send me a preview copy of a book. If they used it to spam me, I have the ability to remove their access.
To save on paper, costs and my sanity I think this is a great idea. What do other people that have Kindles think about this? I know a few of you are out there so I'd be curious.
I just looked across the room at the stack of books that I haven't had a chance to read and I look at the Kindle sitting on my desk and realize that if those books were on this device they'd have a much greater chance of getting read.
Just an idea I've been noodling on for a while now and thought I'd throw out to see what others thought.