| Kindle could kick-off electronic books |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Tuesday, 20 November 2007 | |
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The biggest downside to Kindle seems to be the high entry price - you have to pay $US399 to buy the device: a pricing option where you paid a few dollars per month over, say, two years and commited to buying so many titles per month might have been more attractive, and a variant on the good old fashioned book clubs that have been around for years. There is also another downside; the very high price of some Kindle books compared to their hard copy equivalents. For example on a quick look at the site, http://amazon.com/kindle, I turned up "The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children," list price in paperback $US10.95 and $US35.99 as a Kindle Book! That's even more than the hardback version at $US26.50. I cannot see the rationale behind that. This despite Amazon boasting its catalogue "includes 101 of 112 current New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases, which are $9.99, unless marked otherwise." The most expensive book on Kindle: "Growth Strategies for Software Companies", $US1079 on Kindle, would set you back $US1500 in hardcopy. That seems a much more reasonable pricing policy. The biggest upside, I reckon, would have to be that, in addition ot books, Kindle allows you to download over the cellular network the latest editions of a wide range of newspapers and magazines in versions that are full facsimiles of their hard-copy counterparts. This is good (a) because unlike books there is generally little desire to hang on to printed ephemera once read and (b) it is much easer to read a small screen in a crowded subway train, the back of a taxi or at the breakfast table while you are munching on you cereal. |
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