Amazon cuts cost of Kindle
Cheaper e-book reader
If you’re yet to make the jump from paper books to electronic displays Amazon has an incentive: a Kindle price cut.
The online retailer has reduced the device’s price by $60 (£37/€42) to $299 (£185/€214). Sadly, Amazon hasn’t trimmed the fee of its other, newer Kindle model, the DX, which remains a pricier $489 (£302/€350).
A $60 cut certainly won’t see Amazon fighting new Kindle customers off with sticks, but the move shows the retailer is trying to broaden its appeal.
However, the company claimed the Kindle price cut isn’t just a short-term move designed to boost sales during the summer months.
“We've been able to increase the volume of Kindles we're manufacturing and decrease the cost of doing so,” Cinthia Portugal, an Amazon spokeswoman, told news agency AP. ®
COMMENTS
Amazon, you still suck
How can they even remotely think about selling this? For the price they're selling it, you get an iPhone or a PDA, on which you can read books just fine...
Still extremely overpriced IMHO, but surely this is a good move.
Re: Stephen W Harris
Yeah, I've read about half a dozen of them so far. There's probably another couple of dozen of them that I'll read.
I can understand that people think the price of e-books is currently too high, but you can't really say they're too high when comparing them to normal books. After all, e-books aren't *more* expensive than normal books.
You might feel like you're getting better value for money when you buy something physical than when you buy something in digital form, but you're not.
Digital Fortress
I thought the best bit was when the NRO's head security nerd couldn't be reached for a desperate emergency because he had his head in a mainframe fixing it with a soldering iron and let his mobile go to voicemail.
From an e-book perspective, there are a ton of free books out there that are actually well worth reading, and if you like classics they can justify an e-reader on their own. Actual commercial releases can be a real con, sometimes costing as much as a paperback.
Dan Brown books would be poor value for money if they were free. I actually read all three when stuck in Wales with nothing else, and I fear my IQ has been permanently lowered as a result. They're a bit like the Jeremy Kyle show in book form.
@Mike Cardwell
Your Sony Reader may have come with 100 books, but are they 100 books you want to read? I bought a Bookeen Cybook 3 in Jan 2008 and it came with a bundle of books as well... not read any of them.
Fortunately Baen have 100s of free books that I do read :-)
However, for me, the big problem is the pricing of new books. I'm not paying as much for a DRM'd ebook as it costs for the dead tree edition. Well, I won't pay for DRM at all 'cos if the Cybook dies then I'm SOL. But even without DRM the prices should be lower. I still like seeing the dead tree on my shelves; I'd willingly pay a $2 surcharge to get dead-tree PLUS DRM-free ebook.
Cool-Er
Why wait for the Kindle? The new Cool-ER looks just as good to me and €225 isn't that expensive.
http://www.coolreaders.eu/readers.asp
Personally I'm still reading on my 10 year old Hiebook. Anyone remember those? No, thought not. Maybe I'd better sell it to a museum.
