E-book readers are currently very popular. Much of the credit for that must be given to the Amazon Kindle reader of course – although there are many other e-book readers to choose from today. Even with so many new e-book readers available on the market, the Kindle is still the market leader – and by a long way.
It’s worth remembering that the e-book reader market – as a commercial entity at least – is still relatively new. The sector is growing rapidly, but it is still in a developmental phase. There is, for example, no agreed industry standard for the format of e-books. It does look as if the majority of new readers are lining up behind the ePub format. The Kindle of course has its own proprietary format – something for which it has come in for a fair bit of criticism in the past.
The theory is that having an industry standard would allow e-books to be transferred from one e-book reader to another and allow end users more freedom when it comes to sourcing e-books. Greater choice and more purchasing options should be good for the consumers and lead to lower prices, It’s easy enough to see the logic. It makes sense.
On the other hand, Amazon certainly have a long pedigree of offering good value in the field of reading – be it hardback, paperback or e-books. Their publicly stated strategy of making Kindle books available for $ 9.99 or less has led to some fairly terse discussions with many of the large publishing houses who are, even now, fighting hard to protect the sale of hardback editions.
A recent study, carried out by the New York Times, looked at the average book price for the Kindle, Nook and Sony Daily Edition readers. Ten books, five fiction and five non-fiction, were selected from the NYT’s 2009 best books list. It was found that the Kindle had an average price of $ 13.69, the Sony reader’s average price was $ 15.26 and the Nook had an astonishing average price of $ 19.29 per book.
So, little evidence of Amazon using their dominant market position to profiteer. As a matter of fact, based on these numbers, anyone who reads a book a week would be $300 a year better off using the Kindle than the Nook. Your Kindle reader would not only pay for itself within 12 months, but you would have a few dollars left over to buy a few books.
It’s hard to imagine Amazon’s Kindle winding up as the Betamax of e-book readers. Adherents of the Sony reader can make of that what they will. In all probability, the main discussion for the immediate future is likely to be between the major publishing houses and distributors of e-books. Only when they realise that the world of publishing has moved on will the field be clear for industry standards to be agreed and good customer value to be delivered.
Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.