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Kindle Economics
By Rick | December 25, 2007
Amidst the gripes about Kindle’s $399 price tag, stop to consider the efficiencies built in that over time will end up saving users money. For example, although Sony’s ebook reader is priced $120 less, Sony’s ebooks are often more expensive than Amazon’s. To illustrate, Sue Grafton’s bestseller, T is for Trespass (Kinsey Millhone Mysteries), is priced at $9.99 on Amazon for the Kindle, while the same book lists for $12.99 on Sony’s eBook Store. The same price differential applies to Patricia Cornwell’s bestselling Book of the Dead (Kay Scarpetta, No. 15). At $3 per book, how long would it take you to make up the difference in price between the two electronic book readers? (Never-mind the additional functionality you get from the Kindle.)
Topics: Reading |
December 25th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Bear in mind, Kindle is being sold at a loss.. at least that’s what I think… if your an avid book reader, then it wouldn’t take too long to recoup the difference.
But you also got to factor in RSS feeds and newspapers, which the Sony reader did not offer… its strange, in the end I think that Kindle would be more expensive to own than the Sony
December 25th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Thanks for commenting Sue. (Love your blog by the way.)
I don’t really have any basis for knowing whether the Kindle is being sold at a loss, but I would think Amazon’s visibility will help from a volume standpoint. (Insert joke about making up for per-unit losses with volume sales.) It will be interesting to see if over time the wireless access costs for Amazon result in any changes to the product/service.