Digital Culture Misperception: Kindle is overpriced(!)
4If you go to Amazon Kindle forums or any other Kindle related forums for that matter, you will probably find a ton of people who are complaining about Kindle being very expensive. But no one seems to mention why they think Kindle is expensive. So here are 5 reasons that I believe are behind this misperception:
1. You are better off buying regular books: You are not. That’s just the simple fact. Forget about the fact that Kindle allows you to change the font size on you ebook. Good old books take so much space and you can’t take them everywhere with you. When I moved to the U.S. a few years back, I decided to bring over 300 books with me. I loved those books, but my back is still paying the price for those reckless days.
2. Kindle experience is not as rich: That’s simply not true. I agree that it takes a bit of time to get used to reading with Kindle than a normal book, and of course Kindle looks very much different from your paperback books, but you are not going to know about “Kindle Experience” unless you actually use it.
3. Lack of enough good titles on Amazon Kindle: Now that is not true. You can certainly claim that Amazon Kindle store does not have enough big titles for you to justify buying Kindle, but there are so many Acrobat books out there, and you can send them to your Kindle automatically for 10 cents or you can put them on your Kindle yourself for free. Once you add these PDF titles to the ones available on the Kindle store, you have enough titles to go on reading for years.
4. Kindle is not so different from other eBook readers: That is just not fair. I would understand this coming from someone who has had a Kindle for a while, but for people who have not even seen a Kindle in their life to come with that statement is just not fair. Amazon Kindle not only matches what Sony Readers offer, it offers a wide range of features (e.g. Wireless connection, GPS) that are simply not offered by anyone else in the market. Can you connect to Wikipedia to look something up on your Sony Reader?
5. Kindle’s Battery Life Is a major Turn Off: This is another excuse that I wouldn’t read too much into. Sure. If you leave your Wireless connection on, your Kindle will be needing a recharge after about 2 days, but I have gone for 8 days without the wireless on, and I think you can probably not going to be able to hold your Kindle straight for 8 consecutive days. Get a spare battery and you are good for half a month.
I think some critics have been really hard on Kindle without even giving it a try. Sure. You are not buying a book, and Kindle surely has its limitations, but it is the best eBook reader out there, and it does the job real well. Not many will afford it these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s overpriced.
