Kindle 2

KINDLE GADGET

Can anyone tell me why the e-books you download to the Kindle or Sony reader cost as much as the actual book?

Published in May 7th, 2009

Posted by admin in Technology and Gadgets

I understand that writers and publishers need to get paid, but other than not having a room full of books why should we be paying standard book price for a download? I understand the benefit of having thousands of books all in one device but technically I'd be buying a device for 0 and saving no money in the long run. At least a real book can be traded into local bookworm book stores for credit.

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Mike P said, in May 7th, 2009 at 4:43 am

As far as I know, Amazon does quite a good job on price of books and Kindle books are cheaper than actual books. Sony, however, cannot provide content cheaper than actual books as they are not book vendor itself, and this is also the most complained by owners of the Sony Reader.

You can check the price of best sellers of Kindle books on Amazon, most of them are cheaper than the actual books:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26rs%3D154606011%26sort%3D-edition-sales-velocity%26ref%255F%3Dsr%255Fst%26bbn%3D154606011%26qid%3D1238148855%26rh%3Dn%253A133140011%252Cn%253A%2521133141011%252Cn%253A154606011%26page%3D1&tag=more_info-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

And for books in public domain, Amazon provide them for free to download, which is impossible for actual books:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26node%3D154606011%26p%255F36%3D0-0&tag=more_info-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

There are also more than 20,000 Kindle books which are lower than $1:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fs%3Fie%3DUTF8%26node%3D133141011%26field-price%3D1-99&tag=more_info-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

Yes, real book can be traded while ebooks cannot, this is the drawback. But I'm the kind of person who seldom sell the books I owned, I want to keep them for reference anytime. So the Kindle does save me quite a lot of money in long term.

Hope it helps.