I’ve looked at the various electronic book readers and read threads about them here. The format wars make me want to wait to buy one, plus I’m way short of money now but anyway…
I often hear, I’d buy one but it’s too expensive, if it goes below $XXX.00 I’d buy one.
So my question is, what is your threshold for me.
I would say for me I wouldn’t consider getting any kind of e-book reader until the price falls below $100.00.
What is your price threshold for considering an e-book reader?
I had a Sony e-reader for long term travel, until it was stolen. It was a lot better to have that in my backpack than a bunch of paper books. When I was in the states though, I didn’t use it because paper books themselves were almost always cheaper. Take Blink for example. It’s $9.99 for the Kindle, but I can get a new paper book for $9.39 from Amazon, or a used one for a little bit less (all prices including shipping). It’s even worse for older books. Take Anna Karenina, for example. Kindle is $14, new is $11, and used is $4.
I paid like $300 for one before I started traveling heavy for my job, and it was worth it to me. I don’t think I will buy another simply because books cost too much.
Ten dollars or less, with content free or less than two dollars a “book.”
I’m gonna agree with this mostly. I understand how handy E-readers can be, after all, I have one on my cell phone, but if I want to read I want paper.
I love having it on my phone cuz it’s always with me and easy to bring up in a pinch if I’m bored, but that’s mostly because I always have my phone on me, I don’t want to lug around a Kindle.
(Although I realize that point is kinda moot cuz I can get Kindle for my phone…but I only use the reader app (Aldiko) when I need to, not so that I can “read on the go”)
I’m a big fan of my Sony Reader. I have one that’s a couple of years old, the PRS-505. I am seriously tempted to upgrade to the new PRS-350 Pocket Edition. It’s smaller, has a full touch screen and has new eInk technology for an even better screen than my PRS-505. I also heard the “screen turn flicker” is much improved with the newest version.
I live in San Diego and the country library system has gotten on the ebook wagon. I can check out books from the library for my Reader (since Sony uses ePub which IIRC the Kindle does not). The selection is pretty random but as more and more books are published as ebooks, I assume it will get better.
So for me, Nook doesn’t have touch screen (it has a touch navigation strip on the bottom), Kindle doesn’t do library books. Sony is also pretty famous for making cool electronic gadgets.
I love my Reader for travel - I used to travel with a book, a back up book and a back up back up book (in case my backup book sucked). It was a hassle to lug the books to and from. Battery life is also great, I’ve done long trips (like 1-2 weeks) and the battery barely moves. Apparently, a Reader works a lot like an etch-a-sketch, only actually turning the page uses battery life (with some exceptions).
Yep. I’d say maybe up to $30-40 for the reader, but the deal-breaker for me is the cost of the books. I have a library, after all. And while I don’t mind paying for a physical book, because I get an actual object, it’s a little galling to pay $20 or more for a few megabytes of data that costs next to nothing to copy for me. Irrational, perhaps, but there it is.
Fifty bucks, but it’s gotta have wi-fi, be able to handle every type of e-book format known to humankind and have a battery that will allow continuous use for up to ten hours straight. Then maybe.
I got my Kobo for $150, and showed it off to my thesis supervisor, who claims he bought a Kindle for his mum for close to $1000 at one point, lol…
So yeah. I’m going to say $150 is my threshold. It came with 100 books too, so if I had to buy all my books a la carte, I would go with the OP’s original estimate of 100 dollars.
That’s pretty much what I was thinking.
I bought a copy of After America by John Birmingham yesterday. Its cover price is $26.00. Amazon is selling hardcover copies at $17.16 and kindle copies at $14.30. Are we supposed to believe that the cost of printing and shipping the book is covered by that $2.86 difference? Amazon is obviously adding on a few dollars of extra profit. Which is stupid when they’re trying to establish a new format - right now they should be selling Kindle books as a loss leader in order to establish the Kindle unit.
Thirded.
Just as soon as I can check out books from the library to one (which presumably will then disappear after a lending period of 3 weeks or so) I’ll be on board.
The price of the books would have to come way down. Yes, I know that there are some free ebooks, but I can get quite a few of them from Project Gutenberg, without having to buy a dedicated piece of electronic equipment. And I think that Amazon in particular is price-gouging.
Uh, did you guys miss the whole controversy where publishers forced Amazon to raise their Kindle prices? Apparently.
Amazon wants to sell every ebook for 9.99 and in fact did for a long time. However, publishers got pissed because it was undermining their physical sales to offer a new book for so cheap and they were pissed that Amazon was dictating price. If any one is price-gouging, it’s the publishers, not Amazon.
I have a Jornada Pocket PC I bought… 15 years ago? The flash memory cards come in larger and larger megabyte capacity every year, and the Pocket PC reads text and rich text format just fine. So I download from Gutenburg Project and the like and THAT’s my e-reader. It’s not perfect, but it works.
Until the official e-book readers and their e-books come WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY down in price I’m sticking to it.
I really don’t care who is keeping the prices of ebooks too high. The fact is that they are too expensive, and I am not likely to buy any until the prices come down drastically.
In the interest of disclosure, I get new books from the library and buy books from Goodwill. I have not paid full price for a book in over fifteen years.
Yeah, this isn’t a new technology at all. I had several generations of Palm Pilots, and I routinely had a book going on it at all times.
I’ll go with this too, with the caveat that the books need to come way down in price, I’m thinking I would pay no more than 5 dollars for a book that is available in paperback.
This. I don’t give a damn about why the cost of ebooks is more than I’m willing to pay. The fact is, I consider the cost to be too high, and I consider the cost of the readers to be too high.
I am totally new to the game – can someone tell me if the Project Guttenberg titles are downloadable to the Kindles and Nooks? I like the $139 price of the Kindle but have no interesting in $9.99 books – but would buy one if I can download the classic Guttenberg titles.
Gutenburg books are readable by anything that can read a *.txt file. So if your whatever can download and read those you’re good.
Right now $15 but if I was making good money maybe $30. But really I’m holding out for an iPad even if it doesn’t get much lower in price…I don’t really care about how the screen looks, the real reason I don’t read books on my computer is the sitting position. If I could lie in bed or on a couch with whatever, then fine. But since the iPad includes all this other shit, unless a generic ereader is fairly cheap, I might as well wait…