E-Book Pricing – Huge Variations Exist
Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader has been a hugely successful product for them. It was initially unveiled in November of 2007 – but it was the release of the enhanced Kindle 2, in February 2009, which saw e-book readers really take off. Amazon followed up with the large display Kindle DX version in the summer of 2009 and the e-book reader market began to grow very rapidly indeed.
The Kindle very quickly became Amazon’s best selling product. Over the Christmas period of 2009 it became Amazon’s “most gifted” ever product. As you might expect, a number of other manufacturers either debuted, or upgraded, e-book readers of their own. Increased competition levels resulted in lower prices and gave end users additional options – both of these are good things of course.
With a greatly increased selection of hardware to choose from, prospective e-book reader buyers require some method to compare the various options available. It’s possible to find a variety of reviews on the web which draw comparisons between the Kindle with Sony’s Daily Edition reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader with the iPad etc. However, a comparison of e-book readers which is focussed solely upon the hardware does not fully capture the essence of the e-book reader experience. In general, and as is often the situation with personal electronic equipment, the most recent models will tend to have some features which are missing in the older models. However, factors like ease of use, clarity of the screen, how many books are available, the price of books, the ease of buying and downloading books etc. all need to be taken into account.
A number of of these are subjective and a matter of personal preference, others are more objective and can be taken into account before choosing a reader to buy. The Amazon Kindle certainly has the advantage regarding the number of Kindle books available. There are more than 420,000 books to choose from on Amazon’s website, and the number is growing on a daily basis. As far as the cost of books is concerned, the Kindle also appears to have an advantage.
A recent study conducted by the New York Times looked at the cost of 10 books – selected from the New York Times 10 Best books of 2009, comprising five non-fiction and five fiction titles – on the three leading e-book readers, the Sony reader, the Kindle and the Nook. The total cost of 10 books for Amazon’s Kindle was $ 136.87 – an average of $ 13.69 per title. The same collection of ten books sourced from Sony’s store worked out at an average price of $ 15.26 and Barnes and Noble equated to a considerablynotably higher price per book of $ 19.29.
So it seems that, based on these numbers, anyone reading a book a week would save to the tune of $300 per annum by going for the Amazon Kindle instead of the Nook. In effect, the Kindle reader would pay for itself and there would still be a few dollars remaining to buy books, in less than 12 months. There’s a great deal of discussion taking place between e-book retailers and the main publishing companies at the moment, so it could be that e-book prices might be subject to change in the future. Even so, it appears self evident that anyone considering purchasing an e-book reader would be well advised to study both the availability of books and their pricing before making a final selection.
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