An off-the-wall promotion campaign by Amazon.

Here's an off-the-wall promotion campaign by Amazon: order a Kindle, and if you don't like it, Amazon will refund your money. In other words, if you buy the Amazon Kindle and then hate it, you may have it for free. Huh.

You might have received this odd offer, but then again, you might not have. (This book publicist and frequent Amazon book buyer did not receive the offer.)

I heard about the Kindle promotion campaign that Amazon is apparently running at TechCrunch. I wonder whether anyone else thinks the offer to refund a dissatisfied Kindle buyer's money is as odd as I do. (TechCrunch points out that Amazon isn't making it easy for a dissatisfied Kindle buyer to get that refund, which doesn't surprise me.)

As someone who hopes to buy an ebook reader as soon as the format wars end (or, at least, come to a natural pause), I was hoping to see a different Kindle promotion -- say, agree to buy X number of books through Amazon and receive a free (or vastly discounted) Kindle. It was a promotional offer of that nature that finally pushed me over the edge when I considered buying a DVD player, so I'm confident that a Kindle promotion that's tied into a book-buying obligation would be a solid promotional ploy for Amazon to consider.

But who am I telling? I'm sure Amazon has already considered that idea, and uncomfortable with it, for now.

Well, okay. While Amazon is waiting, we'll see what other types of ebook readers are brought to the table...and we'll (or, at least, I will) spend the time considering which type of ebook reader I'd actually prefer.