I bought a Kindle about six months ago. I’m a big reader and the idea of having a large number of books available along with the convenience of instantly delivery appealed to me. I live in a town with only one small bookstore and frankly they often don’t have a book that I may want so often I have to travel an hour to larger bookstores nearby to find things in stock or order online and wait days for delivery. For a lot of books I’ve found that it’s not worth the hassle of either option so the books gets stuck onto a list to look at some later time. With the Kindle, I can get the book right now and read immediately. It’s like having a large bookstore right next to my house.
I’ve come to enjoy my Kindle more over time as I get more familiar with the convenience of having a large number of books I can take anywhere. It’s surprising the downtime during the day where you have enough downtime to pull it out and start reading. I still buy plenty of real books and don’t plan to stop as some books work better in paper, but I’m starting to move more of my purchases to the Kindle.
So tonight I looked for a book online and found the following pricing. Note that the Kindle price is the highest of all the options on Amazon. In fact the Kindle version (set by the publisher) is $8.87 more than the bargain price and $4.72 more than the standard hardcover price. Apparently the paper for the printed book has a negative cost to produce.