On the Economics of the Kindle 398
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.
i like the idea of the kindle (Score:4, Insightful)
but I want something with a color screen at least (i know its too much to ask but oh well)
What's the point of this analysis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this largely the point? Who the hell is making a decision to purchase this based on book cost?
Convenience (Score:5, Insightful)
The convenience factor is the equation. The whole equation.
Re:There is more to it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kindle? Where are they? (Score:3, Insightful)
I just got back from vacation and guess what...I FINALLY saw a Kindle in the wild at the airport. I just don't see this thing taking off. The iPhone or something similar has a much greater chance of making it big as an e-book reader. At least with a cell phone you can justify the cost because you can use it for more than just reading books.
Re:There is more to it... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're locked in to the kindle forever, until they stop supporting it at least:/
Not to be a ra-ra anti-DRM fanboi at every story, but it's somewhat relevant here.
Re:There is more to it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Why does it matter if the screen is color or not? Are that many of the books you normally read "in color"? While I enjoy the smell and feel of a yellowing used book, I don't think an eBook reader is going to mimic that.
Personally, while I see the fucking thing Slashvertised here frequently and I hear about the grand sales that Amazon vaguely reports, I have yet to see one in action. Even though I see a good portion of bus riders every single day with normal old books, magazines, newspapers, laptops, and mobile devices (mostly Blackberries and iPhones), I have yet to see a single Kindle. I guess everyone else, very much like me, cannot justify the price of the device on top of the price of the reading material when there are better options available (the $1 rack at Half Price Books or the local library).
The economics for me are simple: Slashdot gets paid per plug and no one else is really going to care about the device until libraries start loaning out the materials. Until then, if I really want to read an eBook, I'll use what's available to me from my local library system via the web and read it on my already purchased mobile device.
Dead in the water until file format sorted (Score:4, Insightful)
As I have argued ad nauseam here [tug.org] (PDF) and elsewhere, Ebook readers sinply won't take off big-time until the manufacturers forget their proprietary formats and go for something sensible.
Unfortunately, "something sensible" doesn't mean some HTML bodge, RTF kludge, or non-reprocessable binary like PDF, but a persistent, parsable, non-proprietary, standard. Gosh, isn't that what XML was supposed to do?
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
I take it that you've never taken biology or chemistry. The books use color illustrations for a reason, and it's not to justify the price gouging.
Or that you've not read many books talking about basic art concepts or novels that have illustrations in them. Sure they cost more, but there's definitely a reason why the illustrations are there.
Color is hard to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you can get sunlight readable color screens but they chew power and are costly.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:3, Insightful)
Because reading a laptop screen sucks ass if you have to read for any length of time.
Cost estimates off by factor of ten, inconvenient. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:college textbook analysis doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, you buy them used at 90% of the original cost and sell them back at 10%.
But yeah, I agree with both points: the Kindle can't handle the requirements of text books, and the publishers have no interest in changing the status quo (especially not by making things easier for the students).
What about the economics of the Kindle for Amazon? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's consider that a much more interesting topic.
The idea of giving free cellular data service away with a device is basically the exact opposite of what the rest of the industry does.
You can get an iPhone for $200, but then you're obligated to pay ~10x that amount for wireless service over the next couple of years. A Kindle costs $350 and has free wireless for how long? forever?
Can that business model really be profitable in the long term? If so, I'd say it's a great deal for the consumer. But I have to wonder how many people have to do a bit of web browsing on their Kindle before Amazon starts losing money on wireless bills, and decides to remove features or connectivity?
Re:There is more to it... (Score:4, Insightful)
No shit.
Look, give me a black and white epaper device that can display things.
Forward, back, select, exit, it doesn't need more controls or intelligence than a cheap-ass MP3 player. You can probably steal the chip from those 'picture frame' things.
Don't give me one with a damn wifi connection, or a computer in it. A single USB connection, or a single SD card slot, would be fine. Rechargeable batteries would be a bonus, but not required. (From what I understand, those things use almost no batteries.)
Hell, it doesn't even have to display 'text'...if it can just display GIFs with consecutive filenames, and requires a conversion program to put books on there, I wouldn't mind one bit.
Something like that should actually cost 50 dollars, and 45 dollars of that should be the epaper.
Re:What about the economics of the Kindle for Amaz (Score:1, Insightful)
You can't surf on the web, you can only buy books on it from Amazon's store.
Re:Cost estimates off by factor of ten, inconvenie (Score:2, Insightful)
Convenience is the name of the game for the Kindle. Always having the newest magazines and newspapers available at the tip of your fingers is an amazing feature for commuters. Instead of bringing a book, Newsweek, and the New York Times, you can bring your Kindle. Did you read a favorable book review? Well, download the book! Instant gratification. I also read two or three books at a time. One tends to be intellectual and the others are pop trash. Instead of choosing which books to take, I can just bring them all with me on the Kindle and read whatever I want on the five hour long train ride from New York to Boston.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
An electronic reader could be a killer application for education. Textbooks are large, heavy, and you usually have more than one per semester. (For the sake of this argument, we'll assume engineering/science/bio/med students.) Electronic substitutes fail completely because they're lacking color, suitable resolution screens for rendering technical drawings, and textbook availability. Yes, we all have laptops now, but honestly, reading a book (or 5) on a laptop sucks. I could care less if I couldn't sell books back if it lets me carry an entire semester's worth of material (plus *all* of my other year's worth of references) in a tiny device vs. tons of dead trees.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:4, Insightful)
What, other than your imagination, is the basis that Slashdot gets paid per plug of the Kindle? I am sincerely interested.
Re:What's the point of this analysis? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cost estimates off by factor of ten, inconvenie (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just about selling. Most of the value in culture is sharing. If I have a real physical book, I can lend it to my friend. I can give it to a family member. I can say "read this; I loved it". If it's locked into my Kindle then that's much less likely to happen. That may not happen with every book, but you don't know which ones are going to be important till you read them.
A real book is worth much more than a DRM controlled image of one.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
i completely agree. however, i think there are several things that need to happen before we can take full advantage of electronic textbooks in colleges and perhaps even high schools. first off, like you and the GP have already mentioned, e-book readers need drop in price and employ higher resolution color displays (either e-ink or low power OLEDs), and WiFi capabilities should also come standard. secondly, there needs to be drastic reforms in the publishing industry, or at least in regards to attitudes towards IP enforcement and DRM. lastly, the business model currently employed by textbook publishers of forcing schools and students to buy new editions of books every other year needs to be dropped.
once these changes have occurred, Universities could simply purchase electronic subscriptions to certain texts, which would allow them to check these subscriptions out to students who need them for classes they're enrolled in. all a student would have to do is connect their e-reader to the school's WiFi network and they can check out the textbooks they need. the subscription would give the school permission to distribute "loaned" copies of the electronic textbooks to as many students as needed (rather than enforcing physical limitations on a virtual commodity) and also allow the school to receive updates from the publisher to keep their digital textbooks up to date. if a student finds a textbook particularly helpful they can pay the publisher for a modestly priced static copy, or they can purchase a single-user subscription that will receive automatic updates.
this model would save students a ton of money, and greatly lower the financial barrier to higher education. however, i imagine the textbook publishing industry would be strongly opposed to the necessary changes as it undermines their strategy of planned obsolescence, which is the basis of their current business model. and the true financial/economic advantages of using paperless textbooks won't be realized (at least not by anyone except for the publishers) until e-book publishers stop charging print prices for non-printed materials.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with that idea is that textbooks are too profitable an industry to risk modernizing.
Scratch that - education is too profitable an industry to risk modernizing.
The bottom line is: textbooks are a cash cow for the publishers and schools, and while a lot of people talk about saving dead trees, very few actually care because we don't see those dead trees. We see them on TV, we read about them in craptastic magazines (irony!), but that's always "somewhere else" and the idea fades as quickly as it came.
If you really want to save the trees, kill a lawyer. I'd bet one lawyer wastes more paper in a year than an entire classroom.
Re:Convenience (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dead in the water until file format sorted (Score:1, Insightful)
e-book...an electronioc book...if it displays the text exactly as the author formatted it, then success. non reprocessable format...wtf? When have you had a book that you wanted to reprocess?
Re:Value over Lifespan not ROI (Score:3, Insightful)
E-books offer almost 0 benefit for casual or 'entertainment' reading.
I *strongly* disagree.
I've done most of my entertainment reading on eBook devices for six or seven years now, and it's a hugely better way to read. When traveling I can easily take a dozen or more books with me on the device, and I have a huge library -- hundreds of books -- on my laptop, ready to install on the eBook should I want something different. Since my eBook reader has a backlit screen I can read in the dark, including in bed where the backlight on its lowest setting is plenty of light for me to read, but not enough to disturb my wife's sleep. Because it doesn't require two hands to hold it, I can read while eating, exercising, etc. If I put it in a ziploc baggie, I can read at the beach, in the bathtub, outside in the rain -- lots of places a paper book would be badly damaged. Because the font size is adjustable, I can read with the book near or far, as long as it's close enough to reach the "next page" button periodically.
If you're a heavy reader, there's great value in ebooks. Stay away from the DRM crap, though. That's my biggest reason for not getting a Kindle. I bought a few device-locked books early on, with my first Rocket eBook, and quickly found that they're more trouble than they're worth. Usually overpriced, too.
Why are we even TALKING about ebook readers (Score:3, Insightful)
When we already have handheld devices (phones, iPods, Blackberries, Palms, Pocket Windows) and cheap notebooks (Asus eee, XO, thousands of Wintel laptops?)
All of these devices can display ebooks -- and already are, and have been for YEARS.
My Tungsten E might be old and a little power-hungry, but I read ebooks on it all the time. Heck, even the trendy but otherwise pointless iPod has now morphed into a real PDA. Took Apple long enough, but they finally reinvented the Newton.
Amazon is way late to the party with a device which does nothing else useful. I just don't get it. These single-purpose dedicated devices are a waste of time, space, and money.
How come people like the New York Times still haven't figured out that e-*books* have long since arrived, but ebook *readers* are a technological dead end?
Re:Color is hard to do (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. And e-ink displays (like the Kindle) would be subtractive displays.
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:3, Insightful)
I need you to explain to me why "convergence devices" are necessarily bad, but PCs are not.
Badly designed convergence devices are bad. But if a phone already has a screen, a battery, and a data connection, why not get your email on it too? What's the drawback? Conversely, what's the drawback of having a phone that can check email, but you don't run the email checking program?
I don't get the argument.
Bad design is bad design, but convergence in and of itself isn't bad design.
You don't buy an eBook reader to save money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i like the idea of the kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with "saving students a ton of money" is that it would cost the publishers a ton of money. OK, half that money goes to the bookseller who, as a no-longer-needed intermediary would disappear. But the remainder is lost income for the publisher. The publisher will say that this will produce a dramatic drop in the number of textbooks they publish, to the consequent loss of the whole of academia. Whether that is true or not, if someone's income from a source drops dramatically, they are going to do less of it.
And if the University us paying a block fee for the e-textbook, they are going to have to get that money from somewhere. So either they will charge students for it or they will drop something, presumably worthwhile, that they are doing now (tuition, library books, formal dinners...).
My e-book reader (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, I can see the "screen too small" arguments already, but it does ok for me (320x240 or 60mm x 45mm). With font smoothing turned on, and the backlight set just as I like it, and using my preferred font at my preferred size (all these are fully adjustable), I can read just as well as I can a normal book. I'm only reading truly literary stuff, no diagrams, although things like the maps from LOTR display fine. I only need to gently touch the RH of the screen with my thumb to turn the page, and can annotate, bookmark, highlight and refer to a dictionary where necessary. I have hundreds of ebooks on an SD card, some bought and others from manybooks.net which has the gutenberg library available in all the main formats.
My phone fits in 1 hand, if I get a call it switches to that mode by itself and doesn't "lose" my place. In fact I can have several books on the go at once. As soon as I open any book, it returns to the page I was last on, I don't have to enable that or specifically bookmark anything. The kindle type devices apart from being too large (for my purposes) and being single purpose, have one major flaw when compared to real paper books. You can only have 1 book open at once. I'm not sure how it goes these days, but when I was at school, I would normally have at least 2 books open at once when doing any kind of research. Unless you buy two (or 3) kindles then you will never have that capability. Also, I don't think paper books are replaceable by electronics. The library would becomes a fairly empty souless place once that happened. Part of the appeal of a library to me, is being surrounded by millions of documents that contain the majority of the worlds knowledge and dreams. A couple of servers wouldn't have the same gravitas.
Viewing a single page of text is an unusual way of reading (for me anyway), and if I were to get a full size document reader, it would have to display 2 pages at once, just like a real book. But then it would likely not fit in my pocket, it wouldn't play games, mp3s or movie files, it wouldn't have GPS or 3G internet or a calculator, or stereo bluetooth, or SMS, or email. I would need SSH access to my servers, and be able to program my own software and be able to access just about all of the devices hardware with my own code. Maybe convergence is a bad thing for some, but I have all that in one device that fits comfortably in the palm of one hand. It cost a little more than the kindle, but I bought this device 2 years ago and if I were to have individual devices for music/movies and GPS, and reading and programming, then the individual costs would be prohibitive.
But that's just me, YMMV.
Previous students' notes are the best part (Score:3, Insightful)
of a used textbook! When I was in school lo, these many years ago, I _always_ bought the most marked up books that I could find. I found the additional emphasis on material and margin notes invaluable. Keeping your books in pristine condition actually detracts from their value as far as I'm concerned. :)
Re:Previous students' notes are the best part (Score:3, Insightful)
I never found previous students' notes useful, since we did not think in the same fashion.
For example: They might highlight an entire paragraph, whereas I only cared about the last sentence - the key point. Highlighting is supposed to be exactly that - key points - not turning the whole book yellow. If you do that, you might as well re-read the whole text from start-to-finish.
Re:Color is hard to do (Score:3, Insightful)
not yet - outside of the lab - but when you'll see them they'll be subtractive for sure, e-ink is no different in this respect than regular ink.
Think of it as the difference between mixing with light sources (CRT's, LCD's, plasma) and reflectors (paper & regular ink, e-ink).
The OLPC uses an LCD, so has RGB, it's nothing to do with 'cost', it's everything to do with the basic technology.