Quote:
Originally Posted by bbusybookworm
True, and with the way Amazon has made books so cheap with all the promotions, often even after delivery charges (and that's if you don't get free shipping) paperbooks are so much cheaper, that e-books don't really make sense for most people, especially with the price of the reader itself.
|
I think over time my Kindle will at least be a break-even proposition for me financially with the number of books I buy. Part of it is the low price on new releases and all the free classics, something readily apparent when looking at the ebook market. The other part of it was not something I truly realized when I decided to buy the Kindle. The free samples keep me from buying books I don't end up reading. I hadn't really thought about how much money I was wasting on books I didn't end up liking until I got the Kindle. When I started reading samples and NOT buying books I know I would have normally bought, I realized that I could likely save a bit of cash with this thing. I bought it thinking it probably wasn't that sensible financially. I think most people evaluating it are regarding it as a splurge and splurging isn't something folks are doing much of these days. Even if they did see the money saving potential of it, parting with $350 right now to save a little bit of money over the next few years is still a hard sell and when people are economizing they're probably cutting back on book purchases, too. They're buying 2nd hand and borrowing more from friends and libraries.
I do think part of the shrinking sales is also that a lot of the people who are going to spend that kind of money on reading have now already bought readers. With the hype of the Kindle release a lot of book lovers that didn't know such things were out there went and snapped up a device for themselves, Sonys and Cybooks as well as Kindles. Even with a good economy I think sales still would have tapered off a bit.