Amazon Needs To Show Me A $99 Kindle

[HarryT]

I only know one other person personally who reads fiction for pleasure. The rest of my friends literally never read novels. They do read magazines, but not novels. I'd very much say that novel reading is a minority interest amongst adults.

[nashira]

If I could get my booklight to cooperate with my Authors Preferred Text edition of American Gods, I'd be reading it much faster.

I think 150-200 for a good quality dedicated reading device (as in, the 5-7ish inch ones, not the huge ones) is more than reasonable. And even if more people buy the $99 kindle or whatever... it doesn't mean they'll use it. As gadgets go, $99 is around impulse level for people with a decent income. But Amazon wants book buyers. Not "I'll read a book or two than forget about it" buyers*... it seems hardly worth it, I'd think, for them.

*Wouldn't be the case for every purchaser, of course. But I'd think the risk is higher at that lower price. My opinion. Take it or leave it.

[nashira]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I only know one other person personally who reads fiction for pleasure. The rest of my friends literally never read novels. They do read magazines, but not novels. I'd very much say that novel reading is a minority interest amongst adults.

I can think of about ten off hand, give or take a few... however, most of them are older than me.

(Older than me being older than a nearly-twenty year old. So. Not too surprising. Bookworms born in 91, representin'! )

[DMcCunney]

It's possible to build a $99 reader. It probably isn't possible to build one using eInk. A teardown by industry research outfit iSuppli had the eInk screen and controller accounting for about $80 worth of a Kindle's cost to manufacture. Other suppliers besides PVI have licensed the technology, so we can expect costs to drop, but I don't see them dropping enough to hit a $99 retail price point and break even, let alone make money on the deal.

And there's no real reason for Amazon to bother trying. For Amazon, it's not about the reader, it's about the books. Amazon was already the largest catalog retailer of paper books. eBooks are a logical extension. The infrastructure required to display the catalog and take orders already existed, and adding fulfillment in the form of downloads was trivial. eBooks have no warehousing or shipping costs, and fulfillment can happen at the time the order is placed.

I see the Kindle as essentially priming the pump. Amazon doubtless makes money on them, but the real goal is to boost the market for electronic books. With the Kindle app for the PC and iPhone, and the recently released Kindle app for Android, you don't need a Kindle to buy and read Amazon ebooks. But use of the Mobipocket format and a custom DRM scheme means you are looked into Amazon as the supplier.

Amazon wants you to buy ebooks, and only buy from them. If you do it from a Kindle, that's a fringe benefit.

Would you buy a $99 Kindle that didn't use an eInk screen?
______
Dennis

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I only know one other person personally who reads fiction for pleasure. The rest of my friends literally never read novels. They do read magazines, but not novels. I'd very much say that novel reading is a minority interest amongst adults.

Harry, do they read nonfiction as opposed to novels? For every novel I buy, I buy 5 nonfiction books.

[Crowl]

Since Amazon aren't limited to their own hardware to increase their share of the ebook market, they don't need to force price cuts until costs reduce e.g. the wifi-only model that is supposedly due later in the year will naturally lead to a lower price point without harming their profits.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I only know one other person personally who reads fiction for pleasure. The rest of my friends literally never read novels. They do read magazines, but not novels. I'd very much say that novel reading is a minority interest amongst adults.

I'd be interested in their TV viewing habits.

Reading competes for a reader's discretionary time. It's by nature a foreground visual activity you must actively concentrate on. Listening to music can be a background task done at the same time as other things, but not reading.

So the question for reading is what else the reader might be doing instead, and the main alternative will be TV. I suspect a lot of folks who do read any significant number of books read mainly non-fiction, and scratch the fiction itch with television instead of books.
______
Dennis

[GA Russell]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Would you buy a $99 Kindle that didn't use an eInk screen?
______
Dennis

Dennis, it's not clear to me how much a TFT screen costs the manufacturer. We all assume that it is much less because the jetBook and Libre are so much less expensive than the eInk devices.

Judging from the posts here, jetBook and Libre owners are quite content with the TFT screen.

Considering the ease of use of the Kindle, I imagine that there would be plenty of people who would buy a Kindle with a TFT screen for less than $100 dollars.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

So the question for reading is what else the reader might be doing instead, and the main alternative will be TV. I suspect a lot of folks who do read any significant number of books read mainly non-fiction, and scratch the fiction itch with television instead of books.
______
Dennis

Yes, TV is very much the popular entertainment medium of today (which novels were to a large extent before TV and radio existed, of course).

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

Dennis, it's not clear to me how much a TFT screen costs the manufacturer. We all assume that it is much less because the jetBook and Libre are so much less expensive than the eInk devices.

I don't have cost figures handy, but they are significantly less expensive. It's economies of scale, semiconductor division: the biggest chunk of the cost is an allocated share of the cost of the facility that makes the stuff. The more you make, the smaller that allocated share of the cost becomes for each unit, and the cheaper it can be. eInk isn't at the point of achieving those economies.

Judging from the posts here, jetBook and Libre owners are quite content with the TFT screen.

<shrug> My default reader is a PDA with an LCD screen. I have no problem with it.

eInk gets kudos for low power consumption and hence longer battery life, and a display some folks consider easier on their eyes. Neither of those are compelling factors for me. But eInk does not support color, which is a compelling factor - I need color support in any ebook reading device.

Considering the ease of use of the Kindle, I imagine that there would be plenty of people who would buy a Kindle with a TFT screen for less than $100 dollars.

Possible. But battery life would be an issue, likewise reading outdoors, and the margins on a $99 reader would likely be slim at best. As mentioned earlier, there's no reason for Amazon to bother. They want you to buy the books, from them, and there are an increasing number of options for doing so that don't require a Kindle.
______
Dennis

[Greg Anos]

Maybe it's the Yuppie in me, but I think people are too fixated on e-book hardware cost.

Question, are people going to buy e-books?

The strength of the gadget market has been on the back of pre-owned (you have already bought the audio CD, for example) software, or piracy. If one looks at it software, be it music, video, or e-books as a free cost, then the cost of the gadget is the driving factor. If you are going to buy the software, then the cost of the software, over time, is going to dwarf the cost of the hardware anyway. If I buy 100 books at $5 a book, the $500 dollars I spend is much more than the cost of the gadget. And the more books, or higher priced the e-books, the less the gadget cost matters.

And the more important it is to back up and protect your software investment...

[LDBoblo]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

<shrug> My default reader is a PDA with an LCD screen. I have no problem with it.

eInk gets kudos for low power consumption and hence longer battery life, and a display some folks consider easier on their eyes. Neither of those are compelling factors for me. But eInk does not support color, which is a compelling factor - I need color support in any ebook reading device.


Possible. But battery life would be an issue, likewise reading outdoors, and the margins on a $99 reader would likely be slim at best. As mentioned earlier, there's no reason for Amazon to bother. They want you to buy the books, from them, and there are an increasing number of options for doing so that don't require a Kindle.

Are you suggesting the jetBook isn't sunlight readable, and that it displays color?

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by LDBoblo

Are you suggesting the jetBook isn't sunlight readable, and that it displays color?

Neither. I don't have a Jetbook, and have no idea how it behaves.

Not being able to read them outdoors is a common complaint about devices that don't use eInk, but not all non-eInk devices have that drawback.
______
Dennis

[Ken Maltby]

Hmm... you guys are aware that there has been a nice 5-inch, pocketable, multi-format,
DRM supporting (eReader/Palm DRM), full sunlight readable, faster page turning (with no
flash-to-black), easy 4 AA battery replacement, ebook reader selling at the $99.95 sale/
street price point, for some time now? The Ectaco JetBook Lite. As it also has SDHC
card support, so an unlimited library in your pocket. It requires no tie in with any particular ebook distributor and no power hungry rf transceivers (WiFi, 3G or Blutooth).

As to its effect on reading habits, having the convenience of being able to pick up this
reader, at any time and resume reading right where I left off, makes any idle time much
more interesting. The fact that most any ebook can be purchased easily over the internet, from home and from a number of sources, means there is no lack of reading
choices. Having the huge number of older "free" ebooks available also makes catching
up on material I've always intended to get around to reading, all the more likely to be
read.

As to the impact on the marketplace of the $99 ereader, it appears that price can do
a lot, to gain market share, but it is not the only factor. Perhaps hype can trump value
and exposure = "location, location, location...", means as much as has been said.

Luck;
Ken

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Would you buy a $99 Kindle that didn't use an eInk screen?
______
Dennis

Yes, under 3 conditions:

1- 5-8 in screen
2- All-day battery (12+ hrs, preferably 16)
3- 8 oz maximum weight

In other words, it has to be competitive with existing eink products and/or offer a compelling benefit. (Jetbooks prove it can be done, more or less.)

Emissive LCD panels tend to be cheap because there is a large market for them in portable DVD players and, to a lesser extent, GPS units. Webpads are taking advantage of this and should drive the cost down a bit more.

The downside of LCDs is they are heavy (glass substrate, polarization layers, etc) and power hungry. Reflective LCDs are lighter and a bit less power-hungry but also rarer as there are few other uses for them.

Combine the need for bigger batteries with the need to protect the large glass panel and you tend to get heavier devices.

I think the future of eInk readers is directly tied to the manufacturers' ability to transition to plastic substrate more than their ability offer color. Plastic-based panels will result in thinner, lighter, less fragile readers; the kind of display suitable for young children. If they can simultaneously deliver color they will flourish.

(BTW, I do see an eink reader hitting $99 list price by XMAS 2011 once single-chip readers hit the market, but it probably won't be a kindle.)