Consider E-book Availability And Price When Choosing An E-book Reader

The Kindle e-book reader has been enormously successful for Amazon. It was initially launched in November of 2007 - but it wasn't until the launch of the Kindle 2, in February 2009, that e-book readers began to take off. Amazon followed up with the release of the large format Kindle DX in June of 2009, and the e-book reader market began to grow very rapidly indeed.

The Kindle quickly became Amazon's best selling product. During the festive season of 2009 it became the "most gifted" Amazon product ever. Inevitably, a number of other manufacturers either launched, or updated, their own e-book readers. Increased competition drove prices down and provided customers with additional options - both of these are good things of course.

With increased choice available, potential e-book reader customers need comparisons of the different options on offer. It's possible to find many reviews on the internet which compare the Kindle with Sony's Daily Edition reader, Barnes and Noble's Nook reader with the iPad etc. However, comparing e-book readers in terms of the hardware alone would be missing the point of the whole e-book reader experience. In general, as with any piece of personal electronic equipment, the most recently released model will probably have a few bells and whistles which are lacking in the older models. Factors such as usability, legibility of the display, the number of books available, the price of books, the ease of purchasing books etc. all need to be taken into account.

Although some of these factors are subjective and may be a matter of personal taste, others may be analysed objectively and included in the decision-making process when choosing which e-book reader to buy. When it comes to the number of books available, the Amazon Kindle has a distinct advantage. There are over 420,000 titles on Amazon's website at the moment, and that number is growing every day.

A recent study conducted by the New York Times considered the cost of 10 books - consisting of the New York Times 10 Best books of 2009, 5 non-fiction and 5 fiction titles - for 3 different e-book readers, the Nook, the Kindle and Sony's PRS reader. When bought for the Kindle, the 10 books cost a total of $136.87, an average of $13.69 per book. The same set of 10 books purchase from the Sony store produced an average price of $15.26. The average price per book from the Barnes and Noble site worked out at an astonishing average price per book of $19.29.

So, based upon these figures, if you read a book a week you would be almost $ 300 a year better off buying a Kindle than a Nook. That would effectively mean that your Kindle reader would pay for itself, and then some, in less than 12 months. There are a lot of discussions going on between the major publishing houses and the e-book retailers right now, so e-book prices may well be subject to change in future. However, it seems clear that anyone considering buying an e-book reader would be well advised to take both the availability of books and their pricing into consideration before making a final decision.