The new Amazon Kindle e-book reader is, in my opinion at least, the perfect product. Of course, I can’t deny that, being someone who counts reading as one of my most enjoyable hobbies, I must be pretty much the Amazon marketing team’s ideal consumer. Typically, I would expect to read, as an absolute minimum, one book each week – and it’s not so very unusual for me to have one novel, one non-fiction and a fair number of reference books under consideration at any one time.
I don’t think that’s so really uncommon, otherwise traditional print books wouldn’t sell so well, but it does mean that I can spend quite a bit of money on books. Over and above the financial side of things the space taken up by my collection of books can soon become quite large. Every now and again I sort through the pile and, putting the reference books and my other favourites aside, have a bit of a clear out. Usually the books go to friends or charity shops.
I recently got rid of over fifty volumes in advance of moving house. It wasn’t until I saw them, boxed up and ready to go, that I realised I was looking at a spend of somewhere between $500 and $1000 which had built up in just under a year.
Now, whilst the Amazon Kindle is a pretty costly item in itself, the downloadable e-books from the Kindle store are usually quite a bit cheaper than the printed equivalent. After all, the publisher will have no printing and distribution costs and there will be no postal charges for Amazon. Even saving just a few dollars a book, which seems quite achievable, anyone who reads on a regular basis could fairly quickly recover the cost of the device and then start to save money over time.
The potential benefits aren’t just financial. The Kindle 2 has memory capacity for around 1500 e-books whereas the Kindle DX, which will started shipping on June 10 2009, will 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 usage of paper. It’s easy to see the logic, but obviously some consideration needs to be given to the materials used in production and also the manner in which the device will be disposed of when it reaches the end of its useful life.
The actual benefits achieved will vary from user to user and will probably depend chiefly on how many books are bought per annum. All the same, for regular readers, it seems that the Kindle has a number of distinct advantages which should more than offset the initial cost.