Nick Wingfield on Amazon’s MatchBook program:

One benefit of MatchBook is that Amazon will let its customers buy Kindle editions of books that they purchased in print as far back as 1995, the year Amazon opened for business. The discounted Kindle edition prices apply to book purchases made in the future on Amazon too.

In an interview, Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, said one of the most common requests Amazon receives from its Kindle customers is a way to build parallel print and digital book libraries, which hasn’t been practical at full retail prices. He said many print lovers will enjoy Kindle features like text searching of books, especially reference books. Kindle fans, meanwhile, still want print editions of books as souvenirs and art objects.