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I bought it thinking I would break even in the long run (and I still think so). But I was expecting it to take a couple of years.
Let's see--I have about 140 books on my Kindle right now, I estimate I paid about 170$ for them, if you figure an average of 4$ at a used book store (sure some books can be had cheaper--but a bunch of these were only available in hard cover), I saved 560-170 is 390$ on them, and the Kindle 1 is basically paid for, and I haven't even had it a year.
On the other hand, a lot of these I might not have bought in paper; there were free public domain books that I wanted, but maybe not enough to pay money and give up shelf space for, and there were publisher's freebies that I wouldn't have bought in hardback and possibly not even in paperback--in some cases because I wasn't willing to pay that much and in other cases because I might never have heard of them. So I'm not sure about the savings.
What I *am* sure of is that I love having fully searchable books that weigh nothing and take no space--that I can obtain on an instant's whim and often for free. Having the web available, if slowly and clunkily, is a bonus.
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