When Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder and CEO Jeff Bezos personally bought the Washington Post newspaper a couple of years ago, there were some unanswered questions about what he planned to do with it. One answer surfaced last night: give Amazon Prime members six-month free trial subscriptions to the national digital edition and then try to get them to pay $3.99 a month after that.
The story was reported late Tuesday night by Politico Media. According to the report, “The initiative, long in the works, bolsters the Post as a revivified national and global news source, one more competitive to the New York Times, among others.”
Financial arrangements between Bezos and Amazon were not discussed, nor is there any hard data on how successful a similar offer on the Kindle Fire has been. Owners of the Amazon-branded tablet have been offered a free six-month subscription to the Post, then a six-month period where the subscription costs $1 a month, before rising to $3.99. The Post has stopped reported digital subscriber totals and Amazon has said next to nothing about how many subscribers there are to Amazon Prime. The most recent estimates range from 25 million to 40 million.
Currently a year-long subscription to the digital edition of the Post costs $195, far less than either The Wall Street Journal or New York Times. But even at $4 a month, the Post will cost $48 a year more than Buzzfeed, Vox Media, and Vice, all of which are free.
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