Points To Consider When Choosing An E-Book Reader
The Kindle e-book reader has been enormously successful for Amazon. It was initially launched in November of 2007 – but it wasn’t until the launch of the Kindle 2, in February 2009, that e-book readers began to take off. Amazon followed up with the release of the large format Kindle DX in June of 2009, and the e-book reader market began to grow very rapidly indeed.
The Kindle rapidly became Amazon’s number 1 selling product. Over the Christmas period of 2009 it became Amazon’s “most gifted” product ever. As a result of the growth in the e-book reader market, many other manufacturers launched or updated e-book readers of their own. The higher level of competition produced a downward trend in prices and gave potential buyers additional options – both of these are good things of course.
With increased choice available, potential e-book reader customers need comparisons of the different options on offer. It’s possible to find many reviews on the internet which compare the Kindle with Sony’s Daily Edition reader, Barnes and Noble’s Nook reader with the iPad etc. However, comparing e-book readers in terms of the hardware alone would be missing the point of the whole e-book reader experience. In general, as with any piece of personal electronic equipment, the most recently released model will probably have a few bells and whistles which are lacking in the older models. Factors such as usability, legibility of the display, the number of books available, the price of books, the ease of purchasing books etc. all need to be taken into account.
Whilst some of these are subjective to a certain extent, others can be analysed more objectively and factored in to the equation when deciding upon which e-book reader to buy. The Amazon Kindle certainly has an advantage when it comes to the number of Kindle books available. There are over 420,000 titles on the Amazon website and that number is growing every day. When it comes to the cost of the books, it seems that the Kindle also enjoys a significant advantage.
Based upon a recent study by the New York Times, it also seems that Amazon may have an advantage when it comes to the cost of books. The New York Times considered the purchase of 10 books – 5 fiction and 5 non-fiction titles selected from the New York Times 10 Best books of 2009 – and looked at the comparative cost to buy all of these for each of the Kindle, the Sony Daily Edition and the Nook readers. Ten Kindle books cost a total of $136.87 – an average of $13.69 a book. The same set of 10 books bought for the Sony reader resulted in an average price of $15.26. Buying the same books from the Barnes and noble website gave staggering average price per book of $19.29.
So, according to these figures, if you read a book per week then you would save nearly $300 each year by choosing a Kindle rather than a Nook. Your Kindle reader would pay for itself – and leave you with a few dollars left over to buy books – within 12 months. Currently, there are a lot of discussion is going on between the e-book retailers and major publishing houses. It could be that e-book pricing policies may change in future. Nevertheless, it seems abundantly clear that anyone considering purchasing an e-book reader would be well advised to factor in the pricing of the books to their buying decision.
Get the facts on the Amazon Kindle – and have a look at the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you both protect and enhance your reader.
categories: books,ebooks,reading,literature,electronics,personal tech,computers,gadgets,shopping,product reviews
