On the Economics of the Kindle

perlow writes "Just how many books a year would you need to read before the cost of Amazon's Kindle is justified? The answer is not so cut-and-dried. If you're a college student and all of your texts were available on Kindle (possible but unlikely), you could recover the cost of the reader in a semester and a half. For consumers to break even with Kindle's cost in that time, they would have to be in the habit of buying and reading four new hardback books per month — if the convenience factor wasn't part of the equation. At two books per month, breakeven would be in three years." Here is the spreadsheet if you want to play with the numbers.

Comments

Who cares?

[grogglefroth]

I didn't buy a Kindle to save money. The fact that books are cheaper help make it easier to make the decision to buy the Kindle, but.. the primary reason I bought it was convenience. Anywhere I go, I have a library of books to read; they remember where in the book I am (no dropping the book); the font size is variable (my late night reading font is bigger than mid-day); and lastly, the built in modem.

Sure, I can carry a dead tree book or two at the most, but they start to get annoying to have anything more than that. And, late night, reading dead trees is hard on my eyes.

Re:i like the idea of the kindle

[RasputinAXP]

Personally I think they all should have been capped at 18487.