I popped into Amazon.com knowing that industry leaders would be sharing the wealth right? We’ve been over the Kindle Wireless Reading Device here.
So here’s a brief overview of Kindle Books:
I found some fairly sensible prices:
New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2) by Stephenie Meyer (Kindle Edition – Aug 8, 2007) – Kindle Book
Buy: $6.04 Auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle
The paperback sells for the same Price $6.04, so the purchase of a Kindle wireless reading device doesn’t pay.
I found that their average price for a Kindle book new release was in the $9.99 to 11.99 range – still too high, if you ask me; but you can see that they are giving this some serious thought. Considering you’re paying roughly the same price to buy the paperback, there is little incentive to go eBook or lay out the green ($359) for a Kindle.
For example:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (Kindle Edition – Sep 30, 2008) – Kindle Book
Buy: $9.99 Auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle
versus the book:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (Hardcover – Sep 30, 2008)
Buy new: LIST PRICE: $17.99 AMAZON PRICE: $12.23Â Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping.
So, buying the eBook (Kindle) saves you $2.24 but you still have to put out $359 to read it. Doesn’t make sense to me.
The pricing does suggest they’re beginning to think this stuff through. Especially when you think back to its origins and Stephen King’s Plant dollar a chapter buy…
It’s such a big audience and a new market to develop, you’d think they’d lower the price to promote lots of sales. If ever a business wanted to shout about VOLUME! VOLUME! VOLUME! It would be on the world wide web.
