The Amazon Kindle e-book reader has been a tremendously successful product for them. It was originally released in November of 2007 – but it was the launch of the updated Kindle 2, in February 2009, which saw e-book readers really take off. Amazon followed up with the large display Kindle DX model in the summer of 2009 and the e-book reader market began to grow exponentially.
The Kindle very quickly became Amazon’s best selling product. Over the festive period of 2009 it became Amazon’s “most gifted” ever product. Predictabl, many other manufacturers either released, or updated, their own e-book readers. Higher levels of competition resulted in reduced prices and gave customers additional options - both of which are good things of course.
With significantly increased choices on offer, prospective e-book reader buyers need some way to compare the different options presented to them. It’s possible to find a variety of reviews on the web which draw comparisons between the Kindle with Sony’s Daily Edition reader, the iPad with the Nook from Barnes and Noble etc. However, an e-book reader comparison focussed upon the hardware only does not fully capture the essence of the e-book reader experience. As a rule, and as is frequently the situation with modern electronic devices, the most recent models will tend to incorporate some features which are lacking in the older models. However, considerations like usability, readability of the display, the number of available books, the price of books, the ease of buying and downloading books etc. all need to be considered.
Some of these are subjective and a matter of personal opinion, others lend themselves to analysis more easily, and can be weighed up in advance of selecting an e-book reader as a purchase.Amazon’s Kindle certainly has the advantage regarding the number of Kindle books available. There are over 420,000 books available on Amazon’s website, and the number is increasing on a daily basis. As far as the cost of books is concerned, the Kindle also appears to have a clear advantage.
A recent study conducted by the New York Times examined the comparative prices of 10 books – selected from the New York Times 10 Best books of 2009, comprising 5 fiction and 5 non-fiction titles - on the three most popular e-book readers, the Kindle, the Nook from Barnes and Noble and Sony’s PRS reader. The total cost of 10 books for the Kindle was $ 136.87 – an average of $ 13.69 per book. The same set of ten books bought from Sony’s store produced an average price of $ 15.26 and Barnes and Noble worked out at a considerablynotably higher price per book of $ 19.29.
So it seems that, on the basis of these figures, anyone reading a book a week would be almost $ 300 a year better off with the Amazon Kindle in preference to the Nook. In fact, the Kindle reader would finance itself and there would still be a few dollars left over to buy books, in under 12 months. There’s a great deal of discussion underway between e-book retailers and the major publishing companies currently, so perhaps e-book pricing may be liable to modification in the future. However, it appears obvious that anyone considering buying an e-book reader would do well to examine both the availability of books and their prices prior to making a final selection.