Amazon Kindle – Worth The Asking Price?

The new Amazon Kindle ebook reader is, for me at least, a dream come true. Certainly, I would gladly admit that, as someone who counts reading as one of my main hobbies, I must be very much Amazon’s target market. On average, I would expect to read an absolute minimum of one book a week – and it’s not unusual for me to have one fiction, one non-fiction and any number of reference books under consideration at any one time.

I don’t think that’s so spend quite a lot of money on books. Apart from the financial side of things, my collection of books does tend to take up quite a bit of room at home. Every now and again I go through the pile and, putting reference books and favourites aside, have a bit of a tidy out. Usually the books go to friends or charity shops.

I recently got rid of over fifty books before moving house. It wasn’t until I saw them all, boxed up and ready to go, that I realised I was looking at a sum of money of anywhere between $500 and $1000 which had built up in just under twelve months.

Now, whilst the Amazon Kindle is a relatively expensive item in itself, the downloadable e-books from the Kindle store are usually quite a bit cheaper than the printed versions. After all, there are no printing and distribution costs for the publisher and no mail charges for Amazon. Even saving just a few dollars per book, which seems quite achievable, anyone who reads on a regular basis could fairly quickly recoup the cost of the device and then start to save money over time.

The potential benefits aren’t only financial. The Kindle 2 has a storage capacity for around 1500 e-books whereas the Kindle DX, which will commence shipping on June 10 2009, can store 3500. That’s a lot of books – and a lot of physical storage space that will no longer be taken up in your home or office.

Some users have suggested that the Kindle is a green, eco-friendly, device – based upon the fact that it will save on the volume of paper used. It’s easy to see the logic, but clearly some consideration needs to be given to the materials employed in production and also the manner in which the device will be disposed of when it reaches the end of its design life.

The actual benefits achieved will vary from user to user and will probably depend chiefly on how many books are bought each year. However, for keen readers, it does seem as if the Kindle could offer a variety of different advantages which should more than offset the initial purchase cost.

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