Amazon Increases Kindle Conversion Fees

A few weeks ago, I reported here that Amazon had left all the doors open to increasing its wireless fees in the future. In a move that could signal more fee increases for Kindle owners, Amazon has announced that it will be charging $0.15 per megabyte for its document conversion service. That is a significant price hike considering that Amazon was charging only $0.10 per document prior. Amazon has introduced support for .docx and .rtf documents. Here is what Amazon had to say about this change:

Starting May 4, in addition to the existing list of supported file types (DOC, HTML, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TXT, AZW, MOBI, PRC), you can send RTF files to your Kindle email address for convenient wireless delivery. In addition to the existing experimental support of PDF, you can also send DOCX files for conversion. Some complex PDF and DOCX files might not format correctly on your Kindle.

I am all for the support of these new formats but a 10 MB document is now going to cost you $1.5 to convert to the Kindle format. While that is not a significant fee, it still adds up quickly.

We have also modified the fee associated with sending personal documents wirelessly to your Kindle. This fee is now based on the size of your file. The fee for Personal Document Service (via Whispernet) is 15 cents per megabyte rounded up to the next whole megabyte.

If you would like to download your personal documents for free, or if you are not in a wireless area, you can continue to send attachments to “name”@free.kindle.com to be converted. These documents will be e-mailed to your computer at the e-mail address associated with your Amazon.com account login.

The good news is that the free conversion is still in place. But it’s disappointing that Amazon has not provided us customers with a proper reason for this move. It could be that we are all putting too much load on Whispernet. But I still would want to hear it from Amazon. I also believe this move is designed to extract as much money as possible from Kindle owners. The better move would have been to introduce a hybrid fee model — one that doesn’t put heavy users and casual users in the same camp. Here is how I would have changed Amazon Kindle’s fee structure:

• Standard Fee: all Kindlers get to convert 5 documents (25 MB total) for $0.15 per document each month.
• Usage Fee: those who go beyond their 25 MB limit pay $0.15 per each additional MB.
• Plan: those who convert a significant number of documents on a monthly basis can pay a flat monthly fee to avoid per MB plan. They can also choose to pay per megabyte.

What’s your take? Is Amazon’s new fee structure reasonable?