I just got a Kindle today, and I am still trying to find what all it can do.
A lot of the magazines I wanted have one star ratings on them. The reviews cite the Kindle editions being less pages and sections than the print editions, while being twice the price.
**
Why? **
I have a Nook, the original sort, which is black and white only. I went to a tutorial last night, and was told that the original Nook isn’t great for most magazines because magazines tend to have a lot of graphics and color in them…and while the Color Nook can handle this sort of thing, my more basic Nook can’t do it, or at least won’t be able to reproduce all the pretty pictures in full color, just B&W.
I think this would be a matter of “What are they even offered” instead of “Why is the price higher, for less content?”
Not to hi-jack on to Nook V Kindle, but it’s an issue in my family. Free 3-G sold me on the Kindle, Free Dictionary and Wikipedia also? … Oh, and it does something with books too, I hear.
One issue is that, if a magazine or newspaper includes a lot of graphics or photos, these can be expensive to transmit to your Kindle over the 3G network, and Amazon passes those costs on to the publisher, who would have to pass those costs on to you or else leave out a lot of those images. (cite)
Other issues may be that it takes more time and effort to format a magazine’s content so that it’s readable on a Kindle than the publisher wants to spend, or that the publisher would prefer you to read the print version so that you get exposed to all the ads, which help pay for the content. But this is just speculation on my part.
If you have the (free) Calibre program, you can use it to download some free magazine/newspaper content.