By now you've read all about the Kindle 2 and its predecessor. It sounds like a very cool thing. Books are about to be cheap and easy to get wherever you are. If you're a traveler, instead of running into a bookstore in the Chicago airport you can just get out your Kindle reader, find the book you want and have it in front of you in 60 seconds. It's a pretty neat concept. I'd like to have one.
As I right this, you can purchase a Kindle 2 from Amazon for $359. That's a pretty hefty price tag. Keep in mind that you're paying a premium for having some of the latest technology in readers. As of right now, I think that's too much to pay for one. Books are, however, cheaper, than if you were to buy a copy of each one. The Intelligent Investor, for example, is about $5 cheaper on Kindle than if you bought the paper back edition. Assuming this was the sole criteria for making the purchase, you would need to buy 72 books before you were in the black on this purchase. That's quite a few books. How many books do you read in a year? Some people read 72 books in a year, but when taken as a percentage of the population, it's a pretty small number.
Of course, (luckily for the Kindle), cost is not the only consideration for most consumers. Having a single device carrying what you would like to read is infinitely more convenient than carrying a couple of bulky, heavy books and magazines. That being said, you also don't have much invested in the paperback you bought at the airport bookstore ($7 or so), so it doesn't matter if you drop it or break it. Dropping the Kindle would be a bad idea. It's difficult to put a value on this convenience, it would be different for different people. Maybe carrying a lighter carry-on (keeping with this airport thing, obviously a Kindle works anywhere) has little value to some, but more to others. I'm going to give it an arbitrary value of $40 dollars over the life of the Kindle. I think it's worth that to have so many books in one place, almost like an ipod. Convenience would be valued different from person to person - you'll have to decide what it's worth to you. Of course, if there's a say, 5% chance you drop and break the Kindle, that would add a cost of $17.95 (359 x .05). For my wife, I would say there's about a 60% chance she would break the Kindle, adding about $215 to the cost;)
I think one way a Kindle's value has been overlooked lies in the potential energy savings. The process of making paper consumes a tremendous amount of energy (and trees!), not to mention the high energy cost of shipping heavy books all over the world. The Kindle does consume energy, but the amount of energy consumed would be far less than buying a book at a store that had been shipped from another location. Ebooks truly are the future, and this is one of the positives coming out of that. Like the other figures, this one is arbitrary and different from individual to individual. You aren't benefiting monetarily from the energy savings, so basically if you act with this in mind you're being a good citizen in terms of social responsibility. This is more valuable to some people than others.
When looking at its overall value, I can't help but be struck by the fact that all it does is allow you to read books (and magazines and books). In an age where phones multi-task as phones, game systems, cameras, wireless internet access, GPS systems, and probably lots of cool stuff I don't even know about yet, it's hard not to expect the reader to do more. Plus, I can already read ebooks on my computer, and do a whole host of other things. For the price of the Kindle plus a couple hundred bucks you could get a new laptop. For considerably less than the cost of the Kindle you could get a Netbook.
Seth Godin has some great ideas about how to increase the value of a Kindle. My favorite is the idea of sharing books. When someone buys a Kindle book, Godin suggests they be able to share it with others. Make information cheaper. I can do that (share it) with a book I buy now, and if I like it, I usually do, so why not allow me to do that on Kindle? You can say it decreases sales but I would say it just increases exposure. People are going to find a way to do this anyway.
I should also mention that Kindle is not your only choice for a reader. There are others, notably the Sony Reader, which is cheaper. The main knock I've seen on the Sony is that you have to hook it up to your computer to download the books, but other than that it sounds like a great product. Plus, it's cheaper! That appeals to my sense of frugality.
For what it's worth, I'm not going to be buying one of these in the near future. For one, there are so many ways to get free and cheap books. On top of that, I think the cost will come down. Anytime you buy something like this while it's the hip new thing you're paying a premium. Plus, the next hip, new thing could be released any day now. That's the thing about technology, your time in the sun is fleeting. I'll wait until the new new thing is on sale, and then I'll pick up the best one I can find. Thanks for reading.
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